Reading Deathly Hallows Half Blood Year
by WierdFeather101
Summary: Hogwarts, the Weasley family, and the Order read 'The Deathly Hallows'. Set during the begining of The Half Blood Prince. Hope you like it. I will make it funny! :D Please review.
1. Learning about the book

**Hey! So this is a story where Hogwarts and some of the order read 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows'. Except they read during the beginning of Harry's 6h year. I hope you like it, and please review. **

Harry had just woken up to the sound of a door opening. He sat up in his bed at and looked around the room that he shared with Ron, ever time that stayed at Grimaulds Place.

The house was quite except for the occasional snore coming from Ron. And then he heard it again, the soft sound of footsteps downstairs.

Slowly getting out of bed, he grabbed his wand and tip toed to the door.

He placed one foot in front of the other, careful not to make a sound as he descended down the staircase.

Whatever he had expected it was not this. There in the blazing coals of the fireplace, Dumbledore's head sparkled while ambers danced around his face.

Whispering feverously, Mr. Weasley was crouching down in front of the Rowing fire.

"What do you mean a book, Albus?"

"Arthur", Dumbledore replied sighing, "As I have explained we were given these books about the life of Harry Potter,"

Harry's hand flew up to his mouth as he slowly flattened himself to the wall. A book, he thought, and about me? He inched his way back towards the stairs then hurried himself upstairs to his room thinking what that may mean.

The Next Morning

Awaking the next morning Harry rubbed his eyes shoving his glasses on, just relaxing until he remembered what had happened last night. He wondered why Dumbledore was so intent on telling Mr. Weasley about the books that were apparently about his life. Well he thought that's got to be interesting. Hopefully, no one would read it, he couldn't think of how much trouble he would get in if everyone read about his life.

How wrong he was.

He settled himself down in a chair beside Hermione, who said a polite Hello before continuing her breakfast.

He yawned as he scraped at his eggs, not in mood to eat.

"You better eat up Harry", Mrs Weasley said as she hugged him good morning.

"Oh, I didn't realize we were going out today?" Harry asked questionly.

"We need to go to Diagon Ally to purchase your school books and supplies."

"Mom!, complained Ron as he dug into his eggs and bacon, "School doesn't start for another week."

"Be that as it may, Dumbledore has asked every student to be at school tomorrow."

"What?" asked Ginny, voicing what everyone was thinking.

"Well Dumbledore asked us to all arrive a week early, something about reading some books."

Harry stopped eating at once. That couldn't mean… No of course not, or could it.


	2. At Hogwarts

Harry, Hermione, and Ron crammed through the Great Hall along with most of the other baffled students.

After everyone had settled down, Dumbledore addressed everyone saying this was going to be a great year and that everyone must come together for the better causes.

Being in his 6th year, Harry had heard this speech many times. Soon he began to doze off from his lack so sleep last night, when Dumbledore brought to discussion what everyone had been wondering.

"Students you may wonder why I have asked you all to come a week early.", he started off staring at the crowd having gained their attention from this one sentence.

"The simple reason we all gather here to read Mr. Harry Potter's 7th year."

Many gasps were heard around the room as their heads swiveled around to face him. Harry had turned pale as his predictions were true.

"So were going to read about the future?" asked a Hufflepuff 3rd year.

"I believe so", Dumbledore replied. "I have taken the liberty to invite a few people to join us in reading.

Not a second after the doors burst open and a group of people walked in. Harry noticed everyone imeeditely. There was Remus, Tonks, Mad- eye, Kingsly, and the Weasleys discluding Percy and Bill.

"Mom?" asked Ron bluntly.

"I have been invited here by dear Albus to read a book …..about Harry", she looked to Dumbledore for conformation. He nodded.

Harry inwardly sighed, joy more people to listen. Hopefully he wouldn't think anything stupid. Then again he was Harry Potter.

"Well", said Dumbledore, "I say with that we begin."

With that he opened the book and read **"The Dark Lord Descending" **


	3. Chapter 1 The Dark Lord Ascending

**The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. For a second they stood quite still, wands directed at each other's chests; then, recognizing each other, they stowed their wands beneath their cloaks and started walking briskly in the same direction.**

**"News?" asked the taller of the two.**

"Wonder what the news their talking about is?" asked Ron

"Oi. We have read the first paragraph and you're already asking questions!" Hermione said to Ron.

**"The best," replied Severus Snape.**

"YOU!" was echoed around the room. But the loudest was Harry.

"YOU TRAITER, I KNEW IT!" shouted Harry pointing his wand at Snape.

"Harry, please sit down, remember this has not happened yet."

Reluctantly, he sat down, still glaring at Snape, while Snape glared back.

**The lane was bordered on the left by wild, low-growing brambles, on the right by a high, neatly manicured hedge. The men's long cloaks flapped around their ankles as they marched.**

**"Thought I might be late," said Yaxley, **

"Death Eater" muttered Harry, so only Hermione and Ron could hear him.

**his blunt features sliding in and out of sight as the branches of overhanging trees broke the moonlight. "It was a little trickier than I expected. But I hope he will be satisfied. You sound confident that your reception will be good?"**

"Wait!"

"Not again Ron", snapped Hermione.

"I was just wondering", Ron went on ignoring Hermione, "Who 'He' is?

"Well maybe if you would shut up, we could find out!"

"Oh", said Ron pointedly, looking clearing embarrassed.

**Snape nodded, but did not elaborate. They turned right, into a wide driveway that led off the lane. The high hedge curved into them, running off into the distance beyond the pair of imposing wrought-iron gates barring the men's way. Neither of them broke step: In silence both raised their left arms in a kind of salute and passed straight through, as though the dark metal was smoke.**

Everyone looked obviously confused, so when in doubt they turned to Dumbledore. Before he could explain Harry spoke up.

"The Dark Mark"

"What?" Dean Thomas asked.

"That's how they got through", Harry said quieter this time.

**The yew hedges muffled the sound of the men's footsteps. There was a rustle somewhere to their right: Yaxley drew his wand again pointing it over his companion's head, but the source of the noise **

**proved to be nothing more than a pure-white peacock, strutting **

**majestically along the top of the hedge.**

Everyone snorted. A peacock.

No one did notice Draco frown slightly, that sounded like Malfoy Manor. But what would they be doing there.

**"He always did himself well, Lucius. Peacocks ..." Yaxley thrust his wand back under his cloak with a snort.**

Everyone glanced over at Draco.

"What!" he said angrily.

**A handsome manor house grew out of the darkness at the end of the straight drive, lights glinting in the diamond paned downstairs windows. Somewhere in the dark garden beyond the hedge a fountain was playing. Gravel crackled beneath their feet as Snape and Yaxley sped toward the front door, which swung inward at their approach, though nobody had visibly opened it.**

"House Elves" Hermione said frusterated.

"HERMIONE" Ron said in mock surprise. "Please don't interrupt when were reading"

Everyone burst out laughing, even Dumbledore's eyes sparkled in amusement.

Hermione glared at Ron, "Ha-ha very funny"

"Was that sarcasm Mione?"

"Mione" Hermione asked distracted, she forgot to glare.

Ron blushed a deeper red than his hair. "It's a nickname" he muttered.

Harry smiled at his best friends, of course they liked each other. Just about everyone knew about it, well of course them.

**The hallway was large, dimly lit, and sumptuously decorated, with a magnificent carpet covering most of the stone floor. The eyes of the pale-faced portraits on the wall followed Snape and Yaxley as they strode past. The two men halted at a heavy wooden door leading into the next room, hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, **

"Scared professor?" Fred asked innocently.

Snape sneered at him, "20 points from Gryffindor"

"Lost more than that before", George whispered.

**then Snape turned the bronze handle.  
**

"OOOH THE SUSPENSE!" shouted Lee, as everyone laughed.

**The drawing room was full of silent people, sitting at a long and ornate table. The room's usual furniture had been pushed carelessly up against the walls. Illumination came from a roaring fire beneath a handsome marble mantelpiece surmounted by a gilded mirror. Snape and Yaxley lingered for a moment on the threshold. As their eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, they were drawn upward to the strangest feature of the scene: an apparently unconscious human figure hanging upside down over the table, revolving slowly as if suspended by an invisible rope, and reflected in the mirror and in the bare, polished surface of the table below. **

"How sick" screamed Hermione.

Everyone else seemed to be just as revolted.

"Who is horrible enough to do that?" asked a 1st year Ravenclaw.

"I don't know", An older Ravenclaw told her, though in her head she had a clue.

**None of the people seated underneath this singular sight were looking at it except for a pale young man sitting almost directly below it. He seemed unable to prevent himself from glancing upward every minute or so.**

**"Yaxley. Snape," said a high, clear voice from the head of the table. "You are very nearly late."**

"Well well well-" started Gred

"That is not good" finished Feorge.

**The speaker was seated directly in front of the fireplace, so that it was difficult, at first, for the new arrivals to make out more than his silhouette. As they drew nearer, however, his face shone through the gloom, hairless, snakelike, with slits for nostrils and gleaming red eyes whose pupils were vertical. He was so pale that he seemed to emit a pearly glow.**

"Voldemort" stated Harry, remembering from all his unwelcoming meetings with him.

All the students and most professors winced at the name.

"How can he say it so calmly", Hannah Abbot asked her friend.

"No idea" she replied.

**"Severus, here," said Voldemort, indicating the seat on his immediate right. "Yaxley beside Dolohov."**

"You are his right hand man!" some hufflepuff yelled.

Harry's eyes grew to slits as he glared at Snape with such intensity.

Snape however, oblivious to the glares sent his way continued reading.

**The two men took their allotted places. Most of the eyes around the table followed Snape, and it was to him that Voldemort spoke first.**

**"So?"**

**"My Lord, the Order of the Phoenix intends to move Harry Potter from his current place of safety on Saturday next, at nightfall."**

"How dare you!" yelled Ron.

He wasn't the only one who was yelling out insults.

"What's the order asked Seamus.

The order all shared looks before looking away.

**The interest around the table sharpened palpably: Some stiffened, others fidgeted, all gazing at Snape and Voldemort.**

Flinch

**"Saturday ... at nightfall," repeated Voldemort. His red eyes fastened upon Snape's black ones with such intensity that some of the watchers looked away, apparently fearful that they themselves would be scorched by the ferocity of the gaze. Snape, however, looked calmly back into Voldemort's face and, after a moment or two, Voldemort's lipless mouth curved into something like a smile.**

Everyone shuddered, he was sounding scarier by the minute.

**"Good. Very good. And this information comes-"**

"**from the source we discussed," said Snape.**

"Git!" Ginny said.

**"My Lord."**

**Yaxley had leaned forward to look down the long table at Voldemort and Snape. All faces turned to him.**

**"My Lord, I have heard differently."**

**Yaxley waited, but Voldemort did not speak, so he went on, "Dawlish, the Auror, let slip that Potter will not be moved until the thirtieth, the night before the boy turns seventeen."**

**Snape was smiling.**

"Now if I were there I would be scared of that." Ron said.

**"My source told me that there are plans to lay a false trail; this must be it. No doubt a Confundus Charm has been placed upon Dawlish. It would not be the first time; he is known to be susceptible."**

**"I assure you, my Lord, Dawlish seemed quite certain," said Yaxley.**

"Well if he is confounded…." Began Hermione, but Snape cut her off by reading again.

**"If he has been Confunded, naturally he is certain," said Snape. "I assure you, Yaxley, the Auror Office will play no further part in the protection of Harry Potter. The Order believes that we have infiltrated the Ministry."**

Everyone gasped. With the Ministry tookin over, how were they going to stand a chance against Voldemort.

**"The Order's got one thing right, then, eh?" said a squat man sitting a short distance from Yaxley; he gave a wheezy giggle that was echoed here and there along the table.**

**Voldemort did not laugh. **

"Of course not" Harry said bitterly, "He doesn't have a sense of humor unless its killing and torturing innocent people."

**His gaze had wandered upward to the body revolving slowly overhead, and he seemed to be lost in thought.**

Again everyone looked revolted as the thought.

**"My Lord," Yaxley went on, "Dawlish believes an entire party of Aurors will be used to transfer the boy.**

**Voldemort held up a large white hand, and Yaxley subsided at once, watching resentfully as Voldemort turned back to Snape.**

"Why of course, we all know how close him and Snapey are."

**"Where are they going to hide the boy next?"**

**"At the home of one of the Order," said Snape. "The place, according to the source, has been given every protection that the Order and Ministry together could provide. I think that there is little chance of taking him once he is there, my Lord, unless, of course, the Ministry has fallen before next Saturday, which might give us the opportunity to discover and undo enough of the enchantments to break through the rest."**

"Well then you must move him before!" Hermione said, terrified for the safety of Harry.

Of course she would be there with him as he moved.

**"Well, Yaxley?" Voldemort called down the table, the firelight glinting strangely in his red eyes. "Will the Ministry have fallen by next Saturday?"**

**Once again, all heads turned. Yaxley squared his shoulders.**

**"My Lord, I have good news on that score. I have with difficulty, and after great effort succeeded in placing an Imperius Curse upon Pius Thicknesse."**

Everyone groaned. This was getting worse and worse.

**Many of those sitting around Yaxley looked impressed; his neighbor, Dolohov, a man with a long, twisted face, clapped him on the back.**

The Weasleys all narrowed their eyes at the mention of their uncles killer.

**"It is a start," said Voldemort. "But Thicknesse is only one man. **

**Scrimgeour must be surrounded by our people before I act. One **

**failed attempt on the Minister's life will set me back a long way."**

**"Yes my Lord, that is true but you know, as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Thicknesse has regular contact not only with the Minister himself, but also with the Heads of all the other Ministry departments. It will, I think, be easy now that we have such a high-ranking official under our control, to subjugate the others, and then they can all work together to bring Scrimgeour down."**

**"As long as our friend Thicknesse is not discovered before he has converted the rest," said Voldemort. "At any rate, it remains unlikely that the Ministry will be mine before next Saturday. If we cannot touch the boy at his destination, then it must be done while he travels."**

"No!" Several people looked Horrid. How was Harry going to escape this.

"He is Harry Potter though" a 3rd year whispered to his friend.

**"We are at an advantage there, my Lord," said Yaxley, who seemed determined to receive some portion of approval. **

"Yes" said Neville, "We all know how important it is to have V- Voldemorts approval."

Everyone looked shocked.

"Yes I said his name. its just a name after all."

Dumbledore smiled at the sight.

**"We now have several people planted within the Department of Magical Transport. If Potter Apparates or uses the Floo Network, we shall know immediately."**

"Gets better and better"

**"He will not do either," said Snape. "The Order is eschewing any form of transport that is controlled or regulated by the Ministry; they mistrust everything to do with the place."**

"Who wouldn't" muttered Harry

**"All the better," said Voldemort. "He will have to move in the open. Easier to take, by far."**

**Again, Voldemort looked up at the slowly revolving body as he went on, "I shall attend to the boy in person. There have been too many mistakes where Harry Potter is concerned. Some of them have been my own. That Potter lives is due more to my errors than to his triumphs."**

"Ya right!" said Ginny. "Harry is way better than you."

Harry beamed at her, while she smiled back.

**The company around the table watched Voldemort apprehensively, each of them, by his or her expression, afraid that they might be blamed for Harry Potter's continued existence. Voldemort, however, seemed to be speaking more to himself than to any of them, still addressing the unconscious body above him.**

**"I have been careless, and so have been thwarted by luck and chance, those wreckers of all but the best-laid plans. But I know better now. I understand those things that I did not understand before. I must be the one to kill Harry Potter, and I shall be."**

Those words settled down hard on everyone, as it sank in.

Though pale, Harry wasn't the least bit scared. He had known for a while.

**At these words, seemingly in response to them, a sudden wail sounded, a terrible, drawn-out cry of misery and pain. Many of those at the table looked downward, startled, for the sound had seemed to issue from below their feet.**

**"Wormtail," **

"Harry" Hermione said warnly, as Harry looked murderous.

Noticing her scared face, Harry took a deep breath. "Im ok", he managed.

**said Voldemort, with no change in his quiet, thoughtful tone, and without removing his eyes from the revolving body above, "have I not spoken to you about keeping our prisoner quiet?"**

**"Yes, m-my Lord," gasped a small man halfway down the table, who had been sitting so low in his chair that it appeared, at first glance, to be unoccupied. Now he scrambled from his seat and scurried from the room, leaving nothing behind him but a curious gleam of silver.**

**"As I was saying," continued Voldemort, looking again at the tense faces of his followers, "I understand better now. I shall need, for instance, to borrow a wand from one of you before I go to kill Potter."**

Everyone suddenly looked really confused. You Know Who borrowing a wand seemed silly.

**The faces around him displayed nothing but shock; he might have announced that he wanted to borrow one of their arms.**

**"No volunteers?" **

"Ha, he actually believed someone would volunteer?"

**said Voldemort. "Let's see ... Lucius, I see no reason for you to have a wand anymore."**

Draco froze, his eyes glazed over. Did there family loose their high up power to the dark lord.

**Lucius Malfoy looked up. His skin appeared yellowish and waxy in the firelight, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.**

**"My Lord?"**

**"Your wand, Lucius. I require your wand."**

**"I ..."**

"I would fee;s bad for him if he wasn't such a Git", Harry told Ron.

**Malfoy glanced sideways at his wife. She was staring straight ahead, quite as pale as he was, her long blonde hair hanging down her back, but beneath the table her slim fingers closed briefly on his wrist. At her touch, Malfoy put his hand into his robes, withdrew a wand, and passed it along to Voldemort, who held it up in front of his red eyes, examining it closely.**

**"What is it?"**

"A wand"

**"Elm, my Lord," whispered Malfoy.**

**"And the core?"**

**"Dragon- dragon heartstring."**

**"Good," said Voldemort. He drew out his wand and compared the lengths. Lucius Malfoy made an involuntary movement; for a fraction of a second, it seemed he expected to receive Voldemort's wand in exchange for his own. The gesture was not missed by Voldemort, whose eyes widened maliciously.**

"That's not going to play down well with Lord Voly." Fred and George sang in a sing song voice.

**"Give you my wand, Lucius? My wand?"**

**Some of the throng sniggered.**

**"I have given you your liberty, Lucius, is that not enough for you? But I have noticed that you and your family seem less than happy of late ... What is it about my presence in your home that displaces you, Lucius?"**

**"Nothing nothing, my Lord!"**

"He's knows occlumency" Harry said.

**"Such lies Lucius ... "**

**The soft voice seemed to hiss on even after the cruel mouth had stopped moving. One or two of the wizards barely repressed a shudder as the hissing grew louder; something heavy could be heard sliding across the floor beneath the table.**

"Nagini" Ron said off the top of his head, remembering what Harry said about the snake that attacked his dad.

Who's Nagini?" asked some Gryffindor.

"You- Know- Whos snake" answered Harry.

**The huge snake emerged to climb slowly up Voldemort's chair. It rose, seemingly endlessly, and came to rest across Voldemort's shoulders: its neck the thickness of a man's thigh; its eyes, with their vertical slits for pupils, unblinking. Voldemort stroked the creature absently with long thin fingers, still looking at Lucius Malfoy.**

"Disturbing!" yelled Hanna Abbott

**"Why do the Malfoys look so unhappy with their lot? Is my return, my rise to power, not the very thing they professed to desire for so many years?"**

"Who would want that?", asked Luna dreamily.

**"Of course, my Lord," said Lucius Malfoy. His hand shook as he wiped sweat from his upper lip. "We did desire it we do."**

"Well they do." Answered one of Luna's fellow Ravenclaws.

**To Malfoy's left, his wife made an odd, stiff nod, her eyes averted from Voldemort and the snake. To his right, his son, Draco, **

"Your there?" asked everyone shcocked.

Mrs. McGonagall looked sadly at the boy. No one deserved that.

**who had been gazing up at the inert body overhead, glanced quickly at Voldemort and away again, terrified to make eye contact.**

**"My Lord," said a dark woman halfway down the table, her voice constricted with emotion, "it is an honor to have you here, in our family's house. There can be no higher pleasure."**

**She sat beside her sister, as unlike her in looks, with her dark hair and heavily lidded eyes, as she was in bearing and demeanor; where Narcissa sat rigid and impassive, Bellatrix leaned toward Voldemort, for mere words could not demonstrate her longing for closeness.**

"BELLATRIX"

"That little bi***.

"Ron!"

**"No higher pleasure," repeated Voldemort, his head tilted a little to one side as he considered Bellatrix. "That means a great deal, Bellatrix, from you."**

"Ewww" Said Lavender Brown.

**Her face flooded with color; her eyes welled with tears of delight.**

**"My Lord knows I speak nothing but the truth!"**

**"No higher pleasure ... even compared with the happy event that, I hear, has taken place in your family this week?"**

Tonks and Draco both looked up wondering who he was talking about.

**She stared at him, her lips parted, evidently confused.**

**"I don't know what you mean, my Lord."**

**"I'm talking about your niece, Bellatrix. And yours, Lucius and Narcissa. **

"Me?" Tonks asked evidently confused. "Why would they be talking about me?"

**She has just married the werewolf, Remus Lupin. You must be so proud."**

Everyone started cheering and whisling while Remus turned bright red and Tonks beamed at him.

**There was an eruption of jeering laughter from around the table. Many leaned forward to exchange gleeful looks; a few thumped the table with their fists. The giant snake, disliking the disturbance, opened its mouth wide and hissed angrily, but the Death Eaters did not hear it, so jubilant were they at Bellatrix and the Malfoys' humiliation. Bellatrix's face, so recently flushed with happiness, had turned an ugly, blotchy red.**

"She gets uglier!" asked Harry politely.

**"She is no niece of ours, my Lord," she cried over the outpouring of mirth. "We Narcissa and I have never set eyes on our sister since she married the Mudblood. This brat has nothing to do with either of us, **

"Tonks is not a beast" shouted Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

**nor any beast she marries."**

"Hey!" yelled the DA. "Remus is not a beast, you are!"

**"What say you, Draco?" asked Voldemort, and though his voice was quiet, it carried clearly through the catcalls and jeers. "Will you babysit the cubs?"**

Remus whole face turned sickly pale. His worst fear was coming true.

**The hilarity mounted; Draco Malfoy looked in terror at his father, who was staring down into his own lap, then caught his mother's eye. She shook her head almost imperceptibly, then resumed her own deadpan stare at the opposite wall.**

**"Enough," said Voldemort, stroking the angry snake. "Enough."**

**And the laughter died at once.**

**"Many of our oldest family trees become a little diseased over time," he said as Bellatrix gazed at him, breathless and imploring, "You must prune yours, must you not, to keep it healthy? Cut away those parts that threaten the health of the rest."**

Everyone looked sick. Pure meant a whole difference to him.

**"Yes, my Lord," whispered Bellatrix, and her eyes swam with tears of gratitude again. "At the first chance!"**

**"You shall have it," said Voldemort. "And in your family, so in the world ... we shall cut away the cancer that infects us until only those of the true blood remain ..."**

Remus grabbed Tonks hand subconsciously.

**Voldemort raised Lucius Malfoy's wand, pointed it directly at the slowly revolving figure suspended over the table, and gave it a tiny flick. The figure came to life with a groan and began to struggle against invisible bonds**

**"Do you recognize our guest, Severus?" asked Voldemort.**

**Snape raised his eyes to the upside down face. All of the Death Eaters were looking up at the captive now, as though they had been given permission to show curiosity. As she revolved to face the firelight, the woman said in a cracked and terrified voice, "Severus! Help me!"**

"She knows him!" shouted Molly looking as deranged as ever.

**"Ah, yes," said Snape as the prisoner turned slowly away again.**

"You better help her."

**"And you, Draco?" asked Voldemort, stroking the snake's snout with his wand-free hand. Draco shook his head jerkily. Now that the woman had woken, he seemed unable to look at her anymore.**

**"But you would not have taken her classes," said Voldemort. **

Everyone became very still. She was a teacher. All the woman looked at each other, each one hoping it wasn't the other.

**"For those of you who do not know, we are joined here tonight by Charity Burbage who, until recently, taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."**

"No!" screamed everyone who had taken muggle studies.

Many people were crying now.

Said teacher was very pale but stared strait ahead.

**There were small noises of comprehension around the table. A broad, hunched woman with pointed teeth cackled.**

**"Yes ... Professor Burbage taught the children of witches and wizards all about Muggles ... how they are not so different from us ..."**

"Which they aren't" yelled Ron, looking at Hermione who blushed.

**One of the Death Eaters spat on the floor. Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape again.**

**"Severus ... please ... please ..."**

**"Silence," said Voldemort, with another twitch of Malfoy's wand, and Charity fell silent as if gagged. "Not content with corrupting and polluting the minds of Wizarding children, last week Professor Burbage wrote an impassioned defense of Mudbloods in the Daily Prophet. Wizards, she says, must accept these thieves of their knowledge and magic. The dwindling of the purebloods is, says Professor Burbage, a most desirable circumstance ... She would have us all mate with Muggles ... or, no doubt, werewolves ..."**

Tonks looked beyond mad as she glared at the book. It didn't matter to her that Remus was a werewolf. And it shouldn't to anyone else.

**Nobody laughed this time. There was no mistaking the anger and contempt in Voldemort's voice. For the third time, Charity Burbage revolved to face Snape. Tears were pouring from her eyes into her hair. Snape looked back at her, quite impassive, as she turned slowly away from him again.**

**"Avada Kedavra"**

Charity choked back a sob, as did many others. It was a horrible way to die.

**The flash of green light illuminated every corner of the room. Charity fell, with a resounding crash, onto the table below, which trembled and creaked. Several of the Death Eaters leapt back in their chairs. Draco fell out of his onto the floor.**

**"Dinner, Nagini," said Voldemort softly, and the great snake swayed and slithered from his shoulders onto the polished wood.**

"Chapter's over" Snape announced in a hallows voice, paying no attention to the glares given to him.

"I would like to read next", announced Hermione.

"**In Memoriam"** she read.


	4. Chapter 2 In Memoriam

**Harry was bleeding. **

"Isn't he always", muttered Ginny to Hermione.

**Clutching his right hand in his left and sweating**

**under his breath, **

"HARRY/ MR. POTTER!" came Mrs. Weasley and Mrs. Mcgonagall.

"Gosh!", Harry whispered to Ron, "Hasn't even happened and I get yelled at."

"Just wait for the rest of the book mate", he laughed as he saw the look upon his friends face.

**he shouldered open his bedroom door. There**

**was a crunch of breaking china. He had trodden on a cup of cold**

**tea that had been sitting on the floor outside his bedroom door.**

"Was that supposed to be a prank-" asked George

"Cause that was lame", finished his twin.

"**What the—?**

"Don't you finish that Harry!" Mrs. Weasley.

Harry wanted to remind her that again this hadn't happened, but she looked scary, so he muttered,

"Yes Mrs. Weasley".

**He looked around, the landing of number four, Privet Drive, was deserted.**

**Possibly the cup of tea was Dudley's idea of a clever booby trap. **

"Ahaha", the twins shouted, "Harry thinks like us"

**Keeping his bleeding hand elevated, Harry scraped the fragments of cup together with the other hand and threw them into the already crammed bin just visible inside his bedroom door. Then he tramped across to the bathroom to run his finger under the tap.**

**It was stupid, pointless, irritating beyond belief that he still had four days**

**left of being unable to perform magic . . . **

"So this must mean your almost 17. You should be going into your 7th year." Hermione recited.

"Wow!" thought Harry, "This is only 1 year from now."

**but he had to admit to himself that this jagged cut in his finger would have defeated him. **

Everyone started laughing, but the twins the most.

Between laughs Fred said, "The boy who lived-"

"Defeated by a cut." George said.

That made everyone laugh even harder.

**He had never learned how to repair wounds, and now he came to think of it—particularly in light of his immediate plans—it seemed a serious flaw in his magical education. **

"Immediate plans?" asked Mrs. Weasley sharply.

Harry just shrugged.

**Making a mental note to ask Hermione how it was done,**

"Of course" Laughed Ron. "When in doubt, ask Hermione.

**he used a large wad of toilet paper to mop up as much of the tea as he could, before returning to his bedroom and slamming the door behind him.**

"Someone needs to control his temper", joked Fred.

Harry stuck his tongue at the twin, between turning his attention back to the book in Hermione's hand.

**Harry had spent the morning completely emptying his school trunk for the**

**first time since he had packed it six years ago. **

"Harry!" Molly said in disapproving manor, "You should really clean that out"

But Harry was too busy wondering why he was cleaning out his trunk, since he had never before.

**At the start of the intervening school years, he had merely skimmed off the topmost three quarters of the contents and replaced or updated them, leaving a layer of general debris at the bottom—**

Most of the girl's were wrinkling their noses in disgust.

**old quills, desiccated beetle eyes, single socks that no longer fit.**

**Minutes previously, Harry had plunged his hand into this mulch, experienced**

**a stabbing pain in the fourth finger of his right hand, and withdrawn it to**

**see a lot of blood. **

"Oh Harry, you really should be more carefully", Hermione ranted fearfully.

"I'll try Hermione", he promised his fretting best friend, "If I could", he muttered to himself.

**He now proceeded a little more cautiously. Kneeling down beside the trunk again, he groped around in the bottom and, after retrieving an old badge that flickered feebly between SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY and**

**POTTER STINKS, **

"You kept that", asked a 1st year Ravenclaw timidly.

Harry looked thoughtful for a second. "I couldn't get rid of it", he admitted. Then added more quietly, "It was the only thing that I had left to remember him."

No one had to ask who 'he' was. Sensing the quietness, Dumbledore began reading again.

**a cracked and worn-out Sneakoscope, and a gold locket inside which a note signed R.A.B. had been hidden, he finally discovered the sharp edge that had done the damage. He recognized it at once. It was a twoinch- long fragment of the enchanted mirror that his dead godfather, Sirius, **

Harry winced, remembering watching his godfather get shot with curse that cost his life.

Hermione put a hand on his shoulder, telling him it was ok.

**had given him. Harry laid it aside and felt cautiously around the trunk for the rest, but nothing more remained of his godfather's last gift except powdered glass, which clung to the deepest layer of debris like glittering grit.**

**Harry sat up and examined the jagged piece on which he had cut himself,**

**seeing nothing but his own bright green eye reflected back at him. Then he**

**placed the fragment on top of that morning's Daily Prophet, which lay unread**

"Well of course, who would read that garbage", said surprisingly Hermione.

Only those around her shared a look of amusement.

**on the bed, and attempted to stem the sudden upsurge of bitter memories,**

**the stabs of regret and of longing the discovery of the broken mirror had occasioned, by attacking the rest of the rubbish in the trunk.**

"You can't run away from your problems, you have to face them." Luna said swaying slightly, her eyes out of focus.

Everyone turned to look at the odd girl.

"Well said Ms. Lovegood", Dumbledore said his eyes twinkling.

**It took another hour to empty it completely, throw away the useless items,**

**and sort the remainder in piles according to whether or not he would need them from now on. His school and Quidditch robes, cauldron, parchment, quills, and most of his textbooks were piled in a corner, to be left behind. **

"What!" everyone shouted.

"Your leaving Hogwarts", Ron sounded shocked along with everyone else.

Even Harry was confused, "I—I-I don't know", he stuttered under the gazes he was given.

"Now why would you be leaving Mr. Potter", asked Professor McGonagall sternly, not liking that one of her Lions was dropping out.

"Its probably some noble thing", replied Ginny.

Everyone continued to stare at Harry. Shocked, almost angry. Harry was mad that everyone was yelling at him as if he had already dropped out.

Dumbledore quickly began to read sensing Harry's anger.

**He wondered what his aunt and uncle would do with them; burn them in the dead of night,**

"Probably", replied Harry bitterly.

**probably,**

"We heard you the first time Harry", moaned George pretending to be annoyed.

**as if they were the evidence of some dreadful crime. His Muggle**

**clothing, Invisibility Cloak, **

"Woah!", shouted Seamus, "You have an invisibility cloak?" he asked in amazment.

"So that's how he has been able to sneak around at night without being caught", thought Malfoy, a sneer playing on his lips.

**potion-making kit, certain books, the photograph album Hagrid had once given him,**

Harry beamed up at Hagrid, who was currently sitting up at the staff table.

Hagrid smiled back down.

**a stack of letters, and his wand had been repacked into an old rucksack. In a front pocket were the Marauder's Map and the locket with the note signed R.A.B. inside it. the locket was accorded this place on honor not because it was valuable—in all usual senses it was worthless—but because of what it had cost to attain it.**

Harry wondered what had to have happened for that locket to be so important, it sounded just like a normal locket.

**This left a sizable stack of newspapers sitting on his desk beside his snowy**

**owl, Hedwig: one for each of the days Harry had spent at Privet Drive this**

**summer.**

**He got up off the floor, stretched, and moved across to his desk. Hedwig**

**made no movement as he began to flick through the newspapers, throwing**

**them into the rubbish pile one by one. The owl as asleep, or else faking: she**

**was angry with Harry about the limited amount of time she was allowed out of her cage at the moment.**

"Man, she has got one heck of an attitude", Charlie said remembering the time Harry had come to stay with them over the summer.

**As he neared the bottom of the pile of newspapers, Harry slowed down,**

**searching for one particular issue that he knew had arrived shortly after he**

**had returned to Privet Drive for the summer; he remembered that there had**

**been a small mention on the front about the resignation of Charity Burbage,**

**the Muggle Studies teacher at Hogwarts. **

"Resigned my bloody-

"Don't you dare finish that sentence Ron Weasly!"

**At last he found it. Turning to page ten, he sank into his desk chair and reread the article he had been looking for.**

**ALBUS DUMBLEDORE REMEMBERED**

**by Elphias Doge**

It was surprising the affect just those 3 words could have on everyone.

Many girls were crying, tears staining their cheeks.

The boys just sat their unable to comprehend what they heard.

The professors looking so shocked as if Voldemort had just appeared there.

Though one thing was sure, everyone was thinking the same thing" How could Dumbledore, so brave and powerful just die."

Harry let that sink in as the words flowed over him. They were drowning him in their own little pond. Sinking him lower and lower.

Harry turned to look up at the Headmaster, and soon he caught his eye. And it was in that moment that Harry understood why he was ok with all of this.

Harry spoke his voice not even cracking, "To the well organized mind, death is but the next greatest adventure." The words Albus Dumbledore has told him.

The headmaster smiled at the young boy, as everyone glanced between the two.

Dumbledore then began to read the article.

**I met Albus Dumbledore at the age of eleven, on our first day**

**at Hogwarts. Our mutual attraction was undoubtedly due to the**

**fact that we both felt ourselves to be outsiders. I had contracted**

**dragon pox shortly before arriving at school, and while I was no**

**longer contagious, my pockmarked visage and greenish hue did not**

**encourage many to approach me. For his part, Albus had arrived at**

**Hogwarts under the burden of unwanted notoriety. Scarcely a year**

**previously, his father, Percival, had been convicted of a savage and**

**well-publicized attack upon three young Muggles.**

Harry along with everyone looked at Dumbledore with an unreadable expression.

**Albus never attempted to deny that his father (who was to die in**

**Azkaban) had committed this crime; on the contrary, when I plucked**

**up courage to ask him, he assured me that he knew his father to be**

**guilty. Beyond that, Dumbledore refused to speak of the sad business,**

**though many attempted to make him do so. Some, indeed,**

**were disposed to praise his father's action and assumed that Albus**

**too was a Muggle-hater. They could not have been more mistaken.**

**As anybody who knew Albus would attest, he never revealed the**

**remotest anti-Muggle tendency. Indeed, his determined support for**

**Muggle rights gained him many enemies in subsequent years.**

**In a matter of months, however, Albus's own fame had begun**

**to eclipse that of his father. By the end of his first year he would**

**never again be known as the son of a Muggle-hater, but as nothing**

**more or less than the most brilliant student ever seen at the school.**

**Those of us who were privileged to be his friends benefited from his**

**example, not to mention his help and encouragement, with which he**

**was always generous. He confessed to me in later life that he knew**

**even then that his greatest pleasure lay in teaching.**

**He not only won every prize of note that the school offered, he**

**was soon in regular correspondence with the most notable magical**

**names of the day, including Nicolas Flamel, the celebrated alchemist;**

**Bathilda Bagshot, the noted historian; and Adalbert Waffling,**

**the magical theoretician. Several of his papers found their way into learned publications such as Transfiguration Today, Challenges in Charming, and The Practical Potioneer. Dumbledore's future career seemed likely to be meteoric, and the only question that remained was when he would become Minister of Magic. Though it was often predicted in later years that he was on the point of taking the job, however, he never had Ministerial ambitions.**

**Three years after we had started at Hogwarts, Albus's brother,**

**Aberforth, arrived at school. They were not alike; Aberforth was**

**never bookish and, unlike Albus, preferred to settle arguments by**

**dueling rather than through reasoned discussion. However, it is**

**quite wrong to suggest, as some have, that the brothers were not**

**friends. They rubbed along as comfortably as two such different**

**boys could do. In fairness to Aberforth, it must be admitted that**

**living in Albus's shadow cannot have been an altogether comfortable**

**experience. Being continually outshone was an occupational hazard**

**of being his friend and cannot have been any more pleasurable as a**

**brother.**

**When Albus and I left Hogwarts we intended to take the thentraditional**

**tour of the world together, visiting and observing foreign**

**wizards, before pursuing our separate careers. However, tragedy**

**intervened. On the very eve of our trip, Albus's mother, Kendra,**

**died, leaving Albus the head, and sole breadwinner, of the family. I**

**postponed my departure long enough to pay my respects at Kendra's**

**funeral, then left for what was now to be a solitary journey. With a**

**younger brother and sister to care for, and little gold left to them,**

**there could no longer be any question of Albus accompanying me.**

**That was the period of our lives when we had least contact. I**

**wrote to Albus, describing, perhaps insensitively, the wonders of my**

**journey, from narrow escapes from chimaeras in Greece to the experiments**

**of Egyptian alchemists. His letters told me little of his**

**day-to-day life, which I guessed to be frustratingly dull for such a**

**brilliant wizard. Immersed in my own experiences, it was with horror**

**that I heard, toward the end of my year's travels, that yet another**

**tragedy had struck the Dumbledores: the death of his sister,**

**Ariana.**

Everyone looked saddened again by this news.

"I'm so sorry Professor", Hermione cried.

"It's quite alright" he replied, but the twinkle did seem to have gone out of his eyes.

**Though Ariana had been in poor health for a long time, the blow,**

**coming so soon after the loss of their mother, had a profound effect**

**on both of her brothers. All those closest to Albus-and I count**

**myself one of that lucky number-agree that Ariana's death, and Albus's**

**feeling of personal responsibility for it (though of course, he**

**was guiltless), left their mark upon him forevermore.**

**I returned home to find a young man who had experienced a**

**much older person's suffering. Albus was more reserved than before,**

**and much less lighthearted. To add to his misery, the loss of Ariana**

**had led, not to a renewed closeness between Albus and Aberforth,**

**but to an estrangement. (In time this would lift-in later years they**

**reestablished, if not a close relationship, then certainly a cordial**

**one.) However, he rarely spoke of his parents or of Ariana from then**

**on, and his friends learned not to mention them.**

**Other quills will describe the triumphs of the following years.**

**Dumbledore's innumerable contributions to the state of Wizarding**

**knowledge, including his discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's**

**blood, will benefit generations to come, as will the wisdom he displayed**

**in the many judgments he made while Chief Warlock of the**

**Wizengamot. They say, still, that no Wizarding duel ever matched**

**that between Dumbledore and Grindelwald in 1945. Those who witnessed**

**it have written of the terror and the awe they felt as they**

**watched these two extraordinary wizards do battle. Dumbledore's**

**triumph, and its consequences for the Wizarding world, are considered**

**a turning point in magical history to match the introduction**

**of the International Statute of Secrecy or the downfall of He-Who-**

**Must–Not-Be-Named.**

**Albus Dumbledore was never proud or vain; **

"Well of course he isn't" Ginny said.

**he could find something to value in anyone, however apparently insignificant or wretched, and I believe that his early losses endowed him with great humanity and sympathy. I shall miss his friendship more than I can say,**

**but my loss is as nothing compared to the Wizarding world's. That**

**he was the most inspiring and the best loved of all Hogwarts headmasters**

**cannot be in question. He died as he lived, working always**

**for the greater good and, to his last hour, as willing to stretch out a**

**hand to a small boy with dragon pox as he was on the day that I met**

**him.**

**Harry finished reading but continued to gaze at the picture accompanying**

**the obituary. Dumbledore was wearing his familiar, kindly smile, but as he**

**peered over the top of his half-moon spectacles, he gave the impression, even**

**in newsprint, of betraying Harry, whose sadness mingled with a sense of humiliation.**

**He had thought he knew Dumbledore quite well, but ever since reading**

**this obituary he had been forced to recognize that he had barely known him**

**at all. **

The present Harry started to agree. How much of Dumbledore id he really know?

**Never one had he imagined Dumbledore's childhood or youth; it was**

**as though he had sprung into being as Harry had known him, venerable and**

**silver-haired and old. The idea of a teenage Dumbledore was simply odd, like**

**trying to imagine a stupid Hermione or a friendly Blast-Ended Skrewt.**

Everyone laughed for once.

"Harry, my friend you have the strangest thoughts", Ron told him.

**He had never thought to ask Dumbledore about his past. No doubt it would**

**have felt strange, impertinent even, but after all, it had been common knowledge that Dumbledore had taken part in that legendary duel with Grindelwald, and Harry had not thought to ask Dumbledore what that had been like, nor about any of his other famous achievements. No, they had always discussed Harry, Harry's past, Harry's future, Harry's plans . . . **

"There goes that big ego Potter", Snape muttered lazily.

Harry glared at the Potions professor.

**and it seemed to Harry now, despite the fact that his future was so dangerous and so uncertain, that he had missed irreplaceable opportunities when he had failed to ask Dumbledore more about himself, even though the only personal question he had ever asked his headmaster was also the only on he suspected that Dumbledore had not answered honestly:**

"**What do you see when you look in the mirror?"**

"**I? I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks."**

**After several minutes' thought, Harry tore the obituary out of the Prophet,**

**folded it carefully, and tucked it inside the first volume of Practical Defensive**

**Magic and Its Use Against the Dark Arts. **

**Then he threw the rest of the newspaper into the rubbish pile and turned to face the room. It was much tidier. The only things left out of place were today's Daily Prophet, still lying on the bed, and on top of it, the piece of broken mirror.**

**Harry moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment off today's Daily**

**Prophet, still lying on the bed, and on top of it, the piece of broken mirror.**

**Harry moved across the room, slid the mirror fragment off today's Prophet,**

**and unfolded the newspaper. He had merely glanced at the headline when he**

**had taken the rolled-up paper from the delivery owl early that morning and**

**thrown it aside, after nothing that it said nothing about Voldemort. Harry**

**was sure that the Ministry was leaning on the Prophet to suppress news about**

**Voldemort. It was only now, therefore, that he saw what he had missed.**

**Across the bottom half of the front page a smaller headline was set over a**

**picture of Dumbledore striding along looking harried:**

**DUMBLEDORE—THE TRUTH AT LAST?**

Suddenly Hermione's eyes became slits. If this was who she was thinking of…

**Coming next week, the shocking story of the flawed genius considered**

**by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation. Stripping**

**away the popular image of serene, silver-bearded wisdom, Rita**

**Skeeter **

Nearly everyone growled at her name.

**reveals the disturbed childhood, the lawless youth, the lifelong**

**feuds, and the guilty secrets that Dumbledore carried to his**

**grave. WHY was the man tipped to be Minister of Magic content**

**to remain a mere headmaster? WHAT was the real purpose of the**

**secret organization known as the Order of the Phoenix? HOW did**

**Dumbledore really meet his end?**

**The answers to these and many more questions are explored in**

**the explosive new biography, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore,**

**by Rita Skeeter, exclusively interviewed by Betty Braithwaite, page**

**13, inside.**

"That bloody little git".

**Harry ripped open the paper and found page thirteen. The article was**

**topped with a picture showing another familiar face: a woman wearing jeweled**

**glasses with elaborately curled blonde hair, her teeth bared in what was**

**clearly supposed to be a winning smile, wiggling her fingers up at him. Doing**

**his best to ignore this nauseating image, Harry read on.**

"Harry WHY?" Hermione asked him irritated that he was reading all this trash.

**In person, Rita Skeeter is much warmer and softer than her famously**

**ferocious quill-portraits might suggest. Greeting me in the**

**hallway of her cozy home, she leads me straight into the kitchen**

**for a cup of tea, a slice of pound cake and, it goes without saying, a**

**steaming vat of freshest gossip.**

"**Well, of course, Dumbledore is a biographer's dream," says Skeeter.**

"**Such a long, full life. I'm sure my book will be the first of very,**

**very many." Skeeter was certainly quick off the mark. Her ninehundred**

**page book was completed a mere four weeks after Dumbledore's**

**mysterious death in June. I ask her how she managed this**

**superfast feat.**

"**Oh, when you've been a journalist as long as I have, working**

**to a deadline is second nature. I knew that the Wizarding world as**

**clamoring for the full story and I wanted to be the first to meet that**

**need."**

"We didn't ask for this book of lies though!" yelled Ron.

**I mentioned the recent, widely publicized remarks of Elphias**

**Doge, Special Advisor to the Wizengamot and longstanding friend**

**of Albus Dumbledore's, that "Skeeter's book contains less fact than**

**a Chocolate frog card."**

"Absolutly true", Harry spoke truthfully.

**Skeeter throws back her head and laughs.**

"**Darling Dodgy! I remember interviewing him a few years back**

**about merpeople rights, bless him. Completely gaga, seemed to**

**think we were sitting at the bottom of Lake windermere, kept telling**

**me to watch out for trout."**

**And yet Elphias Doge's accusations of inaccuracy have been echoed**

**in many places. Does Skeeter really feel that four short weeks have**

**been enough to gain a full picture of Dumbledore's long and extraordinary**

**life?**

"**Oh, my dear," beams Skeeter, rapping me affectionately across**

**the knuckles, "you know as well as I do how much information can**

**be generated by a fat bag of Galleons, a refusal to hear the word**

'**no,' and a nice sharp Quick-Quotes Quill! People were queuing to**

**dish the dirt on Dumbledore anyway. Not everyone thought he was**

**so wonderful, you know—he trod on an awful lot of important toes.**

"What lies", Ginny scoffed.

But Harry didn't speak up, how did he know what to believe any more.

**But old Dodgy Doge can get off his high hippogriff, because I've had**

**access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for, one**

**who has never spoken in public before and who was close to Dumbledore**

**during the most turbulent and disturbing phase of his youth."**

**The advance publicity of Skeeter's biography has certainly suggested**

**that there will be shocks in store for those who believe Dumbledore**

**to have led a blameless life. What were the biggest surprises**

**she uncovered, I ask?**

"No we really don't wonder!", Said Fred and George loudly.

"**Now, come off it, Betty, I'm not giving away all the highlights before**

**anybody's bought the book!" laughs Skeeter. "But I can promise**

**that anybody who still thinks Dumbledore was white as his beard is**

**in for a rude awakening! Let's just say that nobody hearing him rage**

**against you-Know-Who would have dreamed that he dabbled in the**

**Dark Arts himself in his youth! **

"What?", asked Harry surprised.

Dumbledore pointedly ignored him and kept reading.

**And for a wizard who spent his later years pleading for tolerance, he wasn't exactly broad-minded when he was younger! Yes, Albus Dumbledore had an extremely murky past, not to mention that very fishy family, which he worked so hard to keep hushed up."**

"Probably so people like you wouldn't take it and twist it around" Harry said angrily.

Dumbledore just gave him a knowing smile.

**I ask whether Skeeter is referring to Dumbledore's brother, Aberforth,**

**whose conviction by theWizengamot for misuse of magic caused**

**a minor scandal fifteen years ago.**

"**Oh, Aberforth is just the tip of the dung heap." laughs Skeeter.**

"**No, no, I'm talking about much worse than a brother with a fondness**

**for fiddling about with goats, worse even than the Mugglemaiming**

**father-Dumbledore couldn't keep either of them quiet anyway,**

**they were both charged by the Wizengamot. No, it's the mother**

**and the sister that intrigued me, and a little digging uncovered a**

**positive nest of nastiness—but, as I say, you'll have to wait for chapter nine to twelve for full details. All I can say now is, it's no wonder**

**Dumbledore never talked about how his nose got broken."**

Without thinking, their eyes all moved towards the long crooked nose of Albus Dumbledore.

**Family skeletons notwithstanding, does Skeeter deny the brilliance**

**that led to Dumbledore's many magical discoveries?**

"**He had brains," she concedes, "although many now question**

**whether he could really take full credit for all of his supposed achievements.**

**As I reveal in chapter sixteen, Ivor Dillonsby claims he had**

**already discovered eight uses of dragon's blood when Dumbledore**

'**borrowed' his papers."**

"Is she claiming", Ron said frustrated, "That he stole them."

**But the importance of some of Dumbledore's achievements cannot,**

**I venture, be denied. What of his famous defeat of Grindelwald?**

"**Oh, now, I'm glad you mentioned Grindelwald," says Skeeter**

**with a tantalizing smile. "I'm afraid those who go dewy eyed over**

**Dumbledore's spectacular victory must brace themselves for a bombshell—**

**or perhaps a Dungbomb. very dirty business indeed. All I'll say is,**

**don't be so sure that there really was the spectacular duel of legend.**

**After they've read my book, people may be forced to conclude that**

**Grindelwald simply conjured a white handkerchief from the end of**

**his wand and came quietly!"**

Many looked outraged at that comment.

**Skeeter refuses to give any more away on this intriguing subject,**

**so we turn instead to the relationship that will undoubtedly**

**fascinate her readers more than any other.**

"**Oh yes," says Skeeter, nodding briskly, "I devote an entire chapter**

**to the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship. **

"Great", Harry muttered sarcastically.

**It's been called unhealthy, even sinister. **

"Well, I wondered what she would say" Hermione stated.

**Again, your readers will have to buy my book for the whole story, but there is no question that Dumbledore took an unnatural interest in Potter from the word go. Whether that was really in the boy's best interests—well, we'll see. **

**It's certainly an open secret that Potter has had a most troubled adolescence."**

**I ask whether Skeeter is still in touch with Harry Potter, whom**

**she so famously interviewed last year: a breakthrough piece in which**

**Potter spoke exclusively of his conviction that You-Know-Who had**

**returned.**

"**Oh, yes, we've developed a close bond," says Skeeter. "Poor Potter**

**has few real friends, and we met at one of the most testing moments**

**of his life—the Triwizard Tournament. I am probably one of**

**the only people alive who can say that they know the real Harry**

**Potter."**

Harry looked at Hermione and Ron then they all burst out laughing.

When everyone continued to look at them weirdly, Harry just turned redder and laughed harder.

**Which leads us neatly to the many rumors still circulating about**

**Dumbledore's final hours. Does Skeeter believe that Potter was**

**there when Dumbledore died?**

Everyone turned to look at Harry.

"You were there when it happened." Hermione said breathlessly.

"Remember this is Skeeter were talking about, who knows what she thinks," Ron told her.

"**well, I don't wan to say too much—it's all in the book—but the**

**eyewitnesses inside Hogwarts castle saw Potter running away from**

**the scene moments after Dumbledore fell, jumped, or was pushed.**

**Potter later gave evidence against Severus Snape, a man against**

**whom he has a notorious grudge. **

"WHAT!" Screamed everyone, Harry, Ron, and Hermione the loudest by far.

Snape may be a death eater, but this was crossing the line.

Even Snape, for once, was at a loss for words. He of course showed no emotion at which he was doing so well, but inside his head he was thinking of the Unbreakable Vow he just recently made.

**Is everything as it seems? that is for the Wizarding community to decide—once they've read my book."**

**On that intriguing note, I take my leave. There can be no doubt**

**that Skeeter has quilled an instant bestseller, Dumbledore's legions**

**of admirers, meanwhile, may well be trembling at what is soon to**

**emerge about their hero.**

**Harry reached the bottom of the article, but continued to stare blankly at**

**the page. Revulsion and fury rose in him like vomit; **

Everyone paled thinking about what Harry must think of all this.

**he balled up the newspaper and threw it, with all his force, at the wall, where it joined the rest of the rubbish heaped around his overflowing bin.**

**He began to stride blindly around the room, opening empty drawers and**

**picking up books only to replace them on the same piles, barely conscious of**

**what he was doing, as random phrases from Rita's article echoed in his head:**

**An entire chapter to the whole Potter-Dumbledore relationship . . . It's been called unhealthy, even sinister . . . He dabbled in the Dark Arts himself in his youth**

**. . . I've had access to a source most journalists would swap their wands for . . **

"Harry", Hermione insisted, "you must not let her get to you."

"**Lies!" Harry bellowed, **

"And he let it get to him" Fred announced.

"There's Lily's temper", Remus laughed.

**and though the window he saw the next-door neighbor,**

**who had paused to restart his lawn mower, look up nervously.**

**Harry sat down hard on the bed. The broken bit of mirror danced away**

**from him; he picked it up and turned it over in his fingers, thinking, thinking**

**of Dumbledore and the lies with which Rita Skeeter was defaming him . . . .**

**A flash of brightest blue. Harry froze, his cut finger slipping on the jagged**

**edge of the mirror again. He had imagined it, he must have done. He glanced**

**over his shoulder, but the wall was a sickly peach color of Aunt Petunia's choosing:**

**There was nothing blue there for the mirror to reflect. He peered into the**

**mirror fragment again, and saw nothing but his own bright green eye looking**

**back at him.**

'**Lily's eyes', Snape corrected in his head.**

**He had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it, because**

**he had been thinking of his dead headmaster. **

Every single person in the room with the exception of a few flinched at the sound of that.

**If anything was certain, it was that the bright blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore would never pierce him again.**

"The chapter is over", announced Dumbledore to the hall. "I do believe we can read one more before I send you all off to bed."

"Would anyone like to read?"

"I would", came a familiar voice from the entrance of the Great Hall. Everyone turned.

**Ooooooh, wonder who it is! I will dedicate the next chapter to the first person who reviews and guesses who the "Mystery Person" is. **

**Well that's another chapter done. I know this chapter was really sucky, but that's only because this is probably a boring chapter full of just articles. I promise though the next one will be loads better, which I am almost positive I am going to update tomorrow. Please don't forget to Read then Review! **


	5. Chapter 3 The Dursley's Departing

**Hey so I apologize for not uploading on Monday like I said I would. Some important things came up that were priority. But enough with my life, you're here for my story. Well I uploaded today, so pretty good :P **

** So I dedicate this chapter to edboy5926 because they guessed one of the people for the "Mystery Person". **

**I hope you enjoy this chapter. Please review, it makes me happy. **

"Would anyone like to read?"

"I would", came a familiar voice from the entrance of the Great Hall. Everyone turned.

The Hall doors slamming behind them, Bill Weasley came walking in, with Fleur by his side.

"Bill?" asked Ron, as Mrs. Weasley ran and embraced her eldest son.

He beamed at them all, "Got an owl saying something bout a book and Harry" his eyes traveling towards Harry's direction.

"Yes Mr. Weasley", Dumbledore greeted, "I am glad you both were able to make it. You may take a seat over by your family."

Bill wondered towards the Gryffindor table where the book floated towards him. He opened up and began.

"**The Dursley's Departing" **

**The sound of the front door slamming echoed up the stairs and a voice roared, "Oh! You!"**

"They can't talk to you like that", yelled Tonks her bright pink hair turning a fiery red.

Harry just sighed, of course they could, hadn't they been doing it for years.

**Sixteen years of being addressed thus left Harry in no doubt when his uncle was calling, nevertheless, he did not immediately respond. **

"Harry", Hermione groaned, one day he was going to get in deep trouble for always being so stubborn.

Harry smiled innocently at her.

**He was still at the narrow fragment in which, for a split second, he had thought he saw Dumbledore's eye.**

"There is no way to awaken the dead, Harry", Hermione said gently.

"I know!", he replied back frustrated, "This hasn't even happened."

"Oh" she said with a blush, "Yes, well continue".

**It was not until his uncle bellowed, "BOY!" **

"He needs to respect you more Harry, would you like me to talk to them?"

"It's fine Mrs. Weasley." He told her.

Seeing her apprehension look, he sighed, "really I am."

"We can talk to them Harry" said George

"Oh of course, we'll just have a little chat with them." Insisted Fred with the same gleam in his eyes.

"Absolutely not", their father said at once. "Especially not after that one incident."

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny burst out laughing remembering that time.

Everyone else just stared at them, wondering what happened.

**that Harry got slowly out of bed and headed for the bedroom door, pausing to add the piece of broken mirror to the rucksack filled with things he would be taking with him.**

**"You took your time!" roared Vernon Dursley when Harry appeared at the top of the stairs, "Get down here. I want a word!"**

"How about Slimey little g-

"Ron!"

**Harry strolled downstairs, his hands deep in his pants pockets. **

Remus smiled, "Just like James".

Harry whole face brightened as he heard that. He loved hearing about how alike he was to his dad.

**When he searched the living room he found all three Dursleys. They were dressed for packing; Uncle Vernon in an old ripped-up jacket and Dudley, Harry's, large, blond, muscular cousin, in his leather jacket.**

**"Yes?" asked Harry.**

**"Sit down!" said Uncle Vernon. Harry raised his eyebrows. "Please!" added Uncle Vernon,**

"Wow!" exclaimed Harry in complete surprise. "I don't think I have ever heard him say please before.

Molly just shook her head sadly in disappointment.

**wincing slightly as though the word was sharp in his throat. **

"Bet they were"

**Harry sat. He thought he knew what was coming. His uncle began to pace up and down, Aunt Petunia and Dudley, following his movement with anxious expressions. Finally, his large purple face crumpled with concentration. **

"Lovely description mate" Ron told Harry

"Just stating the truth"

**Uncle Vernon stopped in front of Harry and spoke.**

**"I've changed my mind," he said.**

"What a surprise" said Harry sarcastically.

**"What a surprise," said Harry.**

"Harry!" Gred groaned

"We heard you the first time" Feorge implied.

**"Don't you take that tone-" began Aunt Petunia in a shrill voice, but Vernon Dursley waved her down "It's all a lot of claptrap," said Uncle Vernon, glaring at Harry with piggy little eyes. "I've decided I don't believe a word of it. We're staying put, we're not going anywhere."**

**Harry looked up at his uncle and felt a mixture of exasperation and amusement. Vernon Dursley had been changing his mind every twenty four hours for the past four weeks, packing and unpacking and repacking the car with every change of heart. Harry's favorite moment had been the one when Uncle Vernon, unaware that Dudley had added his dumbbells to his case since the last time it been repacked, had attempted to hoist it back into the boot and collapsed with a yelp of pain and much swearing.**

Every started to laugh.

"I would have loved to see that", Dean snorted while wiping away his tears from laughing.

**"According to you," Vernon Dursley said, now resuming his pacing up and down the living room, "we Petunia, Dudley, and I are in danger. From from "**

**"Some of 'my lot' right?" said Harry. **

Many purebloods, mainly the Slytherins looked insulted.

**"Well I don't believe it," repeated Uncle Vernon, coming to a halt in front of Harry again. "I was awake half the night thinking it all over, and I believe it's a plot to get the house."**

**"The house?" repeated Harry. "What house?"**

**"This house!" shrieked Uncle Vernon, the vein his forehead starting to pulse. "Our house! House prices are skyrocketing around here! You want us out of the way and then you're going to do a bit of hocus pocus and before we know it the deeds will be in your name and **

Harry shook his head at how dumb his Uncle was being. He hated that house, he most definitely did not want it.

**"Are you out of your mind?" demanded Harry. "A plot to get this house? Are you actually as stupid as you look?"**

"Nice Harry", Lee Jordan high fived him, much to the dismissal of Professor McGonagall.

**"Don't you dare!" squealed Aunt Petunia, but again Vernon waved her down. **

Harry was slightly baffled, he was almost acting normal. Not nice, but normally he would have yelled at Harry and locked him in his room.

**Slights on his personal appearance were it seemed as nothing to the danger he had spotted.**

**"Just in case you've forgotten," said Harry, "I've already got a **

**house my godfather left me one. So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?"**

All of the Professors looked down at Harry, giving him those sorry looks, which he ignored like usual.

Why didn't they realize that pitying him didn't help at all, or in fact make him feel better.

**There was silence. Harry thought he had rather impressed his uncle with this argument.**

**"You claim," said Uncle Vernon, starting to pace yet again, "that this Lord Thing **

"George!, Fred turned to his twin, "We are definitely calling him that from now on."

**" Voldemort,"**

Flinched were seen from nearly everyone in the room.

Harry just rolled his eyes at them.

**said Harry impatiently, "and we've been through this about a hundred times already. This isn't a claim, it's fact. Dumbledore told you last year, and Kingsley and Mr. Weasley.**

"Woah!, you went to their house Professor".

"Wicked"

**Vernon Dursley hunched his shoulders angrily, and Harry guessed that his uncle was attempting to ward off recollections of the unannounced visit, a few days into Harry's summer holidays, of two fully grown wizards. The arrival on the doorstep of Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley had come as a most unpleasant shock to the Dursleys. **

Harry looked up to the staff table where Kingsley was.

Kingsley gave Harry a knowing smile.

**Harry had to admit, however that as Mr. Weasley had once demolished half of the living room, his reappearance could not have been expected to delight Uncle Vernon.**

The whole hall erupted into cheering and giggling as a bright Mr. Weasley tried to look anywhere but his wife, who seemed mad all over again.

**"Kingsley and Mr. Weasley explained it all as well," Harry pressed on remorselessly, "Once I'm seventeen, the protective charm that keeps me safe will break, and that exposes you as well as me. The Order is sure Voldemort will target you, whether to torture you to try and find out where I am, or because he thinks by holding you hostage I'd come and try to rescue you."**

**Uncle Vernon's and Harry's eyes met. Harry was sure that in that instant they were both wondering the same thing. **

"Would you", asked a fellow Gryffindor, knowing how much Harry hated his Aunt and Uncle.

Harry though about this.

"Yes", he replied.

When everyone looked at him shocked, he continued on. "No matter how much I hate them, I don't think I would be able to just let them get killed or tortured, they are my last living family members. Beside I would never wish Voldemort's wrath on anyone."

The Order exchanged looks, thinking just what a great Auror he would be.

**Then Uncle Vernon walked on and Harry resumed, "You've got to go into hiding and the Order wants to help. You're being offered serious protection, the best there is."**

**Uncle Vernon said nothing but continued to pace up and down. Outside the sun hung low over the privet hedges. The next door neighbor's lawn mower stalled again.**

"What's a lawn mower", asked Arthur, looking like a little kid asking for candy.

"I will text you after this chapter is over, Mr. Weasley", Hermione replied.

**"I thought there was a Ministry of Magic?" asked Vernon Dursley abruptly.**

**"There is," said Harry, surprised. **

**"Well, then, why can't they protect us? It seems to me that, as innocent victims, guilty of nothing more than harboring a marked man, we ought to qualify for government protection!"**

"As if" snorted Ron. "They shouldn't even qualify for the protection they being offered now."

**Harry laughed; he could not help himself. It was so very typical of his uncle to put his hopes in the establishment, even within this world that he despised and mistrusted. "You heard what Mr. Weasley and Kingsley said," Harry replied. "We think the Ministry has been infiltrated.**

The order members looked very annoyed. Of course Voldemort already knew what they thought about the Ministry.

**Uncle Vernon strode back to the fireplace and back breathing so strongly that his great black mustache rippled his face still purple with concentration.**

**"All right," he said. Stopping in front of Harry get again. "All right, let's say for the sake of argument we accept this protection. I still don't see why we can't have that Kingsley bloke."**

Kingsley let out a chuckle, "I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted."

**Harry managed not to roll his eyes, but with difficulty. **

"Really?", asked Ron. "I wouldn't have been able to have that kind of will- power."

**This question had also been addressed half a dozen times.**

**"As I've told you," he said through gritted teeth, "Kingsley is protecting the Mug- I mean, your Prime Minister."**

**"Exactly he's the best!" said Uncle Vernon,**

"Id feel flattered", Harry said.

**pointing at the blank television screen. The Dursleys had spotted Kingsley on the news, walking along the Muggle Prime Minister as he visited a hospital. This, and the fact that Kingsley had mastered the knack of dressing like a Muggle, not to mention a certain reassuring something in his slow, deep voice, had caused the Dursleys to take to Kingsley in a way that they had certainly not done with any other wizard, although it was true that they had never seen him with earring in.**

People laughed, while eyeing his earring.

"I do like my earring", he said fondly.

**"Well, he's taken," said Harry. "But Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle are more than up to the job "**

"Nice blokes", muttered Mr. Weasley.

**"If we'd even seen CVs..." began Uncle Vernon, but Harry lost patience. Getting to his feet, he advanced on his uncle, not pointing at the TV set himself.**

**"These accidents aren't accidents, the crashed and explosions and derailments and whatever else has happened since we last watched the news. People are disappearing and dying and he's behind it, Voldemort. I've told you this over and over again, he kills Muggles for fun. Even the fogs they're caused by dementors, and if you can't remember what they are, ask your son!"**

"What was that about" asked Mrs. Weasley frightened for his safety.

"Don't worry, we were fine".

**Dudley's hands jerked upward to tower his mouth. With his parents' and Harry's eyes upon him, he slowly lowered them again and asked, "There are... more of them?"**

"Did he really think that their was only 2 of them." Asked a 7th year Slytherin rather rudely.

"Who knows what he thinks", Harry laughed bitterly.

**"More?" laughed Harry. "More than the two that attacked us, you mean? Of course there are hundreds, maybe thousands by this time, seeing as they feed off fear and despair"**

**"All right, all right," blustered Vernon Dursley. "You've made your point "**

**"I hope so," said Harry, "because once I'm seventeen, all of them Death Eaters, dementors, maybe even Inferi **

"What are-

"Just wait Ron, it will explain"

**which means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark wizard **

"Oh!"

**will be able to find you and will certainly attack you. And if you remember the last time you tried to outrun wizards, I think you'll agree you need help."**

**There was a brief silence in which the distant echo of Hagrid smashing down a wooden front door seemed to reverberate through the intervening years. **

Through laughter, Ron choked out, "You did what?"

Hagrid blushed from embarrassment, as everyone continued laughing.

**Aunt Petunia was looking at Uncle Vernon; Dudley was staring at Harry. Finally Uncle Vernon blurted out, "But what about my work? What about Dudley's school? I don't suppose those things matter to a bunch of layabout wizards "**

**"Don't you understand?" shouted Harry. "They will torture and kill you like they did my parents!"**

The whole hall went dead silent as a few tears slipped down the girls faces.

Harry squeezed his eyes shut trying to block out that horrible scream of his mother and bright green light.

He was barely aware of Hermione rubbing his hand and whispering little "its ok's".

Ginny didn't even feel any jealously as she watched Hermione hold his hand. She knew that they were best friends and was glad that someone was comforting him.

**"Dad," said Dudley in a loud voice, "Dad I'm going with these Order people."**

"Well" said Harry speaking, his voice hoarse. "Now we know theirs no way they won't go."

**"Dudley," said Harry, "for the first time in your life, you're talking sense." He knew the battle was won. If Dudley was frightened enough to accept the Order's help, his parents would accompany him. There could be no question of being separated from their Duddykins. **

"Their what?" choked out Seamus

**Harry glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece.**

**"They'll be here in about five minutes," he said, and when one of the Dursleys replied, he left the room. The prospect of parting probably forever from his aunt, uncle, and cousin was one that he was able to contemplate quite cheerfully but there was nevertheless a certain awkwardness in the air. What did you say to one another at the end of sixteen years' solid dislike?**

"Adios, glad I never have to see your face again?"

**Back in his bedroom, Harry fiddled aimlessly with his rucksack then poked a couple of owl nuts through the bats of Hedwig's cage. They fell with dull thuds to the bottom where she ignored them.**

**"We're leaving soon, really soon," Harry told her. "And then you'll be able to fly again."**

**The doorbell rang. Harry hesitated, then headed back out of his room and downstairs. It was too much to expect Hestia and Dedalus to cope with the Dursleys on their own.**

"I'm excited to see how this plays out" chuckled Ron.

**"Harry Potter!" squeaked an excited voice, the moment Harry had opened the door; a small man in a mauve top hat that was sweeping him a deep bow. "An honor as ever!"**

"Great start, bet you loved that"

Harry groaned, embarrassed.

Snape looked at the boy, he must be lying. How could Potter not like the fame, just like his idiot father did.

**"Thanks, Dedalus," said Harry, bestowing a small and embarrassed smile upon the dark haired Hestia. "It's really good of you to do this... They're through here, my aunt and uncle and cousin..."**

**"Good day to you, Harry Potter's relatives!" said Dedalus happily striding into the living room. **

"They wont like that", sung Fred and George.

**The Dursleys did not look at all happy to be addressed thus; **

"Told You!"

"No one disagreed with you, weasel", drawled out Malfoy.

**Harry half expected another change of mind. Dudley shrank neared to his mother at the sight of the witch and wizard.**

**"I see you are packed and ready. Excellent! The plan, as Harry has told you, is a simple one," said Dedalus, pulling an immense pocket watch out of his waistcoat and examining it. "We shall be leaving before Harry does. Due to the danger of using magic in your house. Harry being still underage it could provide the Ministry with an excuse to arrest him. We shall be driving, say, ten miles or so before Disapparating to the safe location we have picked out for you. You know how to drive, I take it?" He asked Uncle Vernon politely.**

"I don't think my dear Uncle will understand"

**"Know how to? Of course I ruddy well know how to drive!" spluttered Uncle Vernon.**

**"Very clever of you, sir, very clever. I personally would be utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs," said Dedalus. He was clearly under the impression that he was flattering Vernon Dursley, who was visibly losing confidence in the plan with every word Dedalus spoke.**

"I'm surprised he lasted this long", muttered Ron.

**"Can't even drive," he muttered under his breath, his mustache rippling indignantly, but fortunately neither Dedalus nor Hestia seemed to hear him.**

"Aww I wanted to see what would happen", complained fred and George.

**"You, Harry," Dedalus continued, "will wait here for your guard. There has been a little change in the arrangements "**

**"What d'you mean?" said Harry at once. "I thought Mad-Eye was going to come and take me by Side Along-Apparition?"**

"Potter", Mad-Eye barked out, "If the Ministry has been infiltrated, ddont you think they would have control to see anyone who Apparates heres?"

"Yea, I'll remember that"

**"Can't do it," said Hestia tersely, "Mad-Eye will explain."**

"Just did", Harry grumbled.

"What was that Potter"

"Nothing"

**The Dursleys, who had listened to all of this with looks of utter incomprehension on their faces, jumped as a loud voice screeched, "Hurry up!" Harry looked all around the room before realizing the voice had issued from Dedalus's pocket watch.**

**"Quite right, were operating to a very tight schedule," said Dedalus nodding at his watch and tucking it back into his waist coat. "We are attempting to time your departure from the house with your family's Disapparition, Harry thus the charm breaks the moment you all head for safety." He turned to the Dursleys, "Well, are we all packed and ready to go?"**

**None of them answered him. Uncle Vernon was still staring appalled at the bulge in Dedalus's waistcoat pocket.**

**"Perhaps we should wait outside in the hall, Dedalus," murmured Hestia. She clearly felt that it would be tactless for them to remain the room while Harry and the Dursleys exchanged loving, possibly tearful farewells.**

Harry nearly choked at that thought. "Loving and tearful…"

Many teachers gave him the usual 'Pity' look.

**"There's no need," Harry muttered, but Uncle Vernon made any further explanation unnecessary by saying loudly, "Well, this is good-bye then boy."**

"**Nice guy"**

**He swung his right arm upward to shake Harry's hand, but at the last moment seemed unable to face it, and merely closed his fist and began swinging it backward and forward like a metronome.**

"**So he is shaking his fist at you" asked Ron stupidly.**

"**Ron"**

"**Yea"**

"**Shut up"**

**"Ready, Duddy?" asked Petunia, fussily checking the clasp of her handbag so as to avoid looking at Harry altogether.**

**Dudley did not answer but stood there with his mouth slightly ajar, reminding Harry a little of the giant, Grawp.**

"You met a giant!", screeched Mrs. Weasley.

"Ya", said Ron quietly.

"And when", Molly whispered, "Were you planning on telling us.

"Mrs. Weasley, we were all completely fine" Hermione said soothingly.

"And you were there too!"

"This is going to be a long book", Harry muttered.

**"Come along, then," said Uncle Vernon.**

**He had already reached the living room door when Dudley mumbled, "I don't understand."**

**"What don't you understand, popkin?" asked Petunia looking up at her son.**

Everyone again cracked up at her awful nicknames.

**Dudley raised a large, ham-like hand to point at Harry.**

**"Why isn't he coming with us?"**

**Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia froze when they stood staring at Dudley as though he had just expressed a desire to become a ballerina.**

"Now I would pay to see that!", said a red haired 6th year.

**"What?" said Uncle Vernon loudly.**

**"Why isn't he coming too?" asked Dudley.**

**"Well, he doesn't want to," said Uncle Vernon, turning to glare at Harry and adding, "You don't want to, do you?"**

"Not at all"

**"Not in the slightest," said Harry.**

"Guess some people really don't change" laughed Ginny.

**"There you are," Uncle Vernon told Dudley. "Now come on we're off."**

**He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps Aunt Petunia stopped too.**

**"What now?" barked Uncle Vernon, reappearing in the doorway.**

**It seemed that Dudley was struggling with concepts too difficult to put into words. After several moments of apparently painful internal struggle he said, "But where's he going to go?"**

"Wow!, does he actually care about me?" asked Harry a surprise look on his face.

**Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon looked at each other. It was clear that Dudley was frightening them. Hestia Jones broke the silence.**

**"But... surely you know where your nephew is going?" she asked looking bewildered.**

**"Certainly we know," said Vernon Dursley. "He's off with some of your lot, isn't he? Right, Dudley, let's get in the car, you heard the man, we're in a hurry."**

"They won't like being called 'some lot'" Arthur stated, especially knowing Hestia and her temper.

**Again, Vernon Dursley marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow.**

**"Off with some of our lot?"**

**Hestia looked outraged. Harry had met this attitude before Witches and wizards seemed stunned that his closed living relatives took so little interest in the famous Harry Potter.**

**"It's fine," Harry assured her. "It doesn't matter, honestly."**

**"Doesn't matter?" repeated Hestia, her voice rising considerably.**

"I'd get out of there, never be within 10 feet when she is angry", Bill said wisely, fore he had met her before.

**"Don't these people realize what you've been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti Voldemort movement?"**

**"Er no, they don't," said Harry. "They think I'm a waste of space, actually but I'm used to "**

Many people were looking very angry at that comment.

"You shouldn't be used to that, Harry!" Hermione lectured her friend.

"Hermione", he said trying to get her attention. "It's fine if they don't care for me—" Hermione began to speak angrily but Harry cut her off again. "It's fine because I have a new family who care for me", he finished smiling at the Weasley's and Hermione.

Hermione beamed back at him and hugged him before allowing Bill to continue reading.

**"I don't think you're a waste of space"**

"What!", sputtered Harry.

**If Harry had not seen Dudley's lips move, he might not have believed it. As it was, he stared at Dudley for several seconds before accepting that it must have been his cousin who had spoken; for one thing, Dudley had turned red. Harry was embarrassed and astonished himself.**

**"Well... er... thanks, Dudley."**

**Again, Dudley appeared to grapple with thoughts too unwieldy for expression before mumbling, "You saved my life,"**

"Well not exactly-"started Hermione before Ron cut her off.

"Here we go again" muttered Ron, "Just listen to the book and you will probably realize that Harry will explain.

Hermione just glared at him, but stayed silent.

**"Not really," said Harry. "It was your soul the dementor would have taken..."**

"See"

"Shut it Ronald!"

**He looked curiously at his cousin. They had had virtually no contact during this summer or last, as Harry had come back to Privet Drive so briefly and kept to his room so much. It now dawned on Harry, however, that the cup of cold tea on which he had trodden that morning might not have been a booby trap at all. Although rather touched he was nevertheless quite relieved that Dudley appeared to have exhausted his ability to express his feelings. After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence.**

"Probably to embarrassed to show he cared." Parvati said, clearly annoyed. She didn't care if he was being nice now, that didn't make up for all those years he was horrible to her D.A teacher.

**Aunt Petunia burst into tears. Hestia Jones gave her an approving look that changed to outrage as Aunt Petunia ran forward and embraced Dudley rather than Harry. "S-so sweet, Dudders..." she sobbed into his massive chest. "S-such a lovely b-boy... s-saying thank you..."**

"Thank you?" was echoed through the walls. "I did't 'ear a 'ank 'you." Fleur said in a dignified voice.

**"But he hasn't said thank you at all!" said Hestia indignantly. "He only said he didn't think Harry was a waste of space!"**

"Exactly", exclaimed Professor McGonagall.

**"Yea but coming from Dudley that's like 'I love you,'" said Harry, torn between annoyance and a desire to laugh as Aunt Petunia continued to clutch at Dudley as if he had just saved Harry from a burning building.**

"That would be a weird sight, I would've cracked up", Ron told Harry.

**"Are we going or not?" roared Uncle Vernon, reappearing yet again at the living room door. "I thought we were on a tight schedule!"**

**"Yes yes, we are," said Dedalus Diggle, who had been watching these exchanged with an air of bemusement and now seemed to pull himself together. "We really must be off. Harry "**

**He tripped forward and wrung Harry's hand with both of his own.**

**"Good luck. I hope we meet again. The hopes of the Wizarding world rest upon your shoulders."**

"Way to put some pressure on you Harry eh?" asked Fred with a laugh.

"Yea it's all wonderful, continue one", growled Mad- Eye.

**"Oh," said Harry, "right. Thanks."**

**"Farwell, Harry," said Hestia also clasping his hand. "Our thoughts go with you."**

"Gonna need it", Harry breathed so quite only Ron and Hermione caught it, glancing at each other.

**"I hope everything's okay," said Harry with a glance toward Aunt Petunia and Dudley.**

**"Oh I'm sure we shall end up the best of chums," said Diggle slightly, waving his hat as he left the room. Hestia followed him.**

"Always so open minded, that one", chuckled Mr. Weasley. Maybe they should all learn to be like that, to see the best in everyone.

**Dudley gently released himself from his mother's clutches and walked toward Harry who had to repress an urge to threaten him with magic. Then Dudley held out his large, pink hand.**

"Flattering", mumbled Fleur into Bill's chest.

**"Blimey, Dudley," said Harry over Aunt Petunia's renewed sobs, "did the dementors blow a different personality into you?"**

**"Dunno," muttered Dudley, "See you, Harry."**

**"Yea ..." said Harry, raking Dudley's hand and shaking it. "Maybe. Take care, Big D."**

**Dudley nearly smiled. They lumbered from the room. Harry heard his heavy footfalls on the graveled drive, and then a car door slammed.**

**Aunt Petunia whose face had been buried in her handkerchief looked around at the sound. She did not seem to have expected to find herself alone with Harry. **

"Awkward!"

**Hastily stowing her wet handkerchief into her pocket, she said, "Well good-bye" and marched towards the door without looking at him.**

All the professor silently shook their heads in sadness at her behavior.

**"Good-bye" said Harry.**

"At least you're polite", considered Molly.

**She stopped and looked back. For a moment Harry had the strangest feeling that she wanted to say something to him; She gave him an odd, tremulous look and seemed to teeter on the edge of speech, but then, with a little of her head, she hustled out of the room after he husband and son.**

"Wonder what she would have said", mused Harry.

"Well that's the chapter" exclaimed Bill.

"I will read next", Padma held her hand out as the book floated towards her.

"**The Seven Potters" **

**Ok well that's the chapter. Should have next one up Friday, if I cant it will be up Sunday afternoon. Hope you like it. Please review, or comment and tell me if I should add any characters. **

** Ps. Some people have been reviewing or commenting on how bad my punctuation and grammar is. Well I am really sorry for that, but I try my best and sometimes I make mistakes. If it really bothers you, I do need a beta reader (wink ;) wink) **


	6. Chapter 4 The Seven Potters

So, it's not last Friday or Sunday, like I said. I realize. I got home really late from a party on Sunday, so…. Sorry. Well here it is, hope you enjoy it.

**Harry ran back upstairs to his bedroom, arriving at the window just in time to see the Dursleys' car swinging out of the drive and off up the road. **

**Dedalus' top hat was visible between Aunt Petunia and Dudley in the backseat. The car turned right at the end of Privet Drive, its windows burned scarlet for a moment in the now setting sun, and then it was gone.**

"And they're really gone, forever", Harry said, he couldn't help the smile that crept up his face, despite the small part of sadness settling in the pit of his stomach.

**Harry picked up Hedwig's cage,**

Harry smiled at the mention of his owl.

**his Firebolt, and his rucksack, gave his unnaturally tidy bedroom one last sweeping look, and then made his ungainly way back downstairs to the hall, where he deposited cage, broomstick, and bag near the foot of the stairs. **

**The light was fading rapidly, the hall full of shadows in the evening light. It felt most strange to stand here in the silence and know that he was about to leave the house for the last time. Long ago, when he had been left alone while the Dursleys went out to enjoy themselves, the hours of solitude had been a rare treat. **

Many of the adults looked sadly to the said boy.

**Pausing only to sneak something tasty from the fridge, he had rushed upstairs to play on Dudley's computer, or put on the television and flicked through the channels to his heart's content. It gave him an odd, empty feeling remembering those times; it was like remembering a younger brother whom he had lost.**

Ron looked incredibly at Harry, "A lost younger brother?"

Harry just shrugged, though he faintly agreed with his future self.

**"Don't you want to take a last look at the place?" he asked Hedwig, who was still sulking with her head under her wing. **

"Major attitude!"

**"We'll never be here again. Don't you want to remember all the good times? I mean, look at this doormat. What memories ... **

Everyone laughed.

"Man, I think you've finally lost it", Ron snickered.

Harry scowled at his so- called best friend, "Thanks", he told Ron sarcastically.

**Dudley sobbed on it after I saved him from the dementors ... Turns out he was grateful after all, can you believe it? ... And last summer, Dumbledore walked through that front door..."**

"Why would Dumbledore come to the Dursley's house?", asked Hermione.

"I believe Ms. Granger that must happen some time this year." Dumbledore told her; though he too was thinking of the reason he probably went to get Harry. And he had a feeling it involved his dear friend Slughorn.

**Harry lost the thread of his thoughts for a moment and Hedwig did nothing to help him retrieve it, but continued to sit with her head under her wing. Harry turned his back on the front door.**

"Never could please her", muttered Harry mock upset.

**"And under here, Hedwig" Harry pulled open a door under the stairs **

Harry's breath caught as he froze. How was everyone going to react to where he slept every night? What about Mrs. Weasley or Hermione? He never thought to tell them because with Voldemort, it seemed so small.

Harry slowly slumped lower in his seat as if trying to disappear.

Many noticed but didn't think anything about it.

**"Is where I used to sleep! **

The whole hall, for once, was quiet. You could have dropped a pen and it would have sounded like a bowling ball falling.

After a couple seconds, all hell broke loose.

"What?" yelled Mrs. Weasley. She was fuming just as Harry thought.

Professor McGonagall turned to Dumbledore. She too, was red in the face from fury. No one, I mean no one messed with her lions.

"Albus", she began. "Do you see how bad they treat him, and yet why do you still make him return there?".

Dumbledore's face was a mask of emotion, but his eyes portrayed sadness. "My dear, I'm afraid he must."

While at the Gryffindor table, Harry was getting pestered.

"Harry", Hermiones voice was full of concern and sadness.

To avoid further questions and sad looks, he spoke up. "I don't anymore."

"But Harry why didn't you tell us in the first place?" Ginny questioned uncertainly.

"It wasn't important considering everything that has been going on, so please continue. He looked at Padma pleadingly.

Still shaken by the new information, she saw his look and read on.

**You never knew me then. Blimey, it's small, I'd forgotten..."**

Many people were still seething.

**Harry looked around at the stacked shoes and umbrellas remembering how he used to wake every morning looking up at the underside of the staircase, which was more often than not adorned with a spider or two. **

Fred and George cracked up at the look on their brother's face as he shivered.

**Those had been the days before he had known anything about his true identity; before he had found out how his parents had died or why such strange things often happened around him. But Harry could still remember the dreams that had dogged him, even in those days: confused dreams involving flashes of green light and once Uncle Vernon had nearly crashed the car when Harry had recounted it a flying motorbike...**

The mood suddenly sobered, as Harry squeezed his eyes shut.

**There was a sudden, deafening roar from somewhere nearby. Harry straightened up with a jerk and smacked the top of his head on the low doorframe. Pausing only to employ a few of Uncle Vernon's choicest swear words, **

"Harry!"

"Sorry"

**he staggered back into the kitchen, clutching his head and staring out of the window into the back garden.**

**The darkness seemed to be rippling, the air itself quivering. Then, one by one, figures began to pop into sight as their Disillusionment Charms lifted. Dominating the scene was Hagrid, wearing a helmet and goggles and sitting astride an enormous motorbike with a black sidecar attached. All around him other people were dismounting from brooms and, in two cases, skeletal, black winged horses.**

"And you of course can see them.", muttered Arthur.

**Wrenching open the back door, Harry hurtled into their midst. There was a general cry of greeting as Hermione flung her arms around him, Ron clapped him on the back, and Hagrid said, "All righ', Harry? Ready fer the off?"**

**"Definitely," said Harry, beaming around at them all. "But I wasn't expecting this many of you!"**

"Something is going on", Hermione said worried.

**"Change of plan," growled Mad-Eye, who was holding two enormous bulging sacks, and whose magical eye was spinning from darkening sky to house to garden with dizzying rapidity. "Let's get undercover before we talk you through it."**

"There's the Moody I know!", Tonks smiled brightly at her mentor.

Tonk's just glared at her.

**Harry led them all back into the kitchen where, laughing and chattering, they settled on chairs, sat themselves upon Aunt Petunia's gleaming work surfaces, or leaned up against her spotless appliances; Ron, long and lanky; **

"Thanks man!", Ron muttered sarcastically, as his family laughed.

**Hermione, her bushy hair tied back in a long plait; **

"And hers is ok!"

**Fred and George, grinning identically; **

As were they now.

**Bill, badly scarred and longhaired;**

**Mr. Weasley, kind-faced, balding, his spectacles a little awry; **

Both men smiled.

**Mad- eye, battle-worn, one-legged, his bright blue magical eye whizzing in its socket; Tonks, whose short hair was her favorite shade of bright pink; **

Mad-Eye just grunted, while Tonk's beamed at Harry and waved.

**Lupin, grayer, more lined; Fleur, slender and beautiful, with her long silvery blonde hair; **

Fleur sent him a dazzling smile, which made every guy glare at Bill, who just smiled and pulled her closer.

**Kingsley, bald and broad-shouldered; Hagrid, with his wild hair and beard, standing hunchbacked to avoid hitting his head on the ceiling; and Mundungus Fletcher, small, dirty, and hangdog, with his droopy beady hound's eyes and matted hair. **

"Eww", squealed Lavender.

Many of the women looked disgusted, too, at his appearance

**Harry's heart seemed to expand and glow at the sight: He felt incredibly fond of all of them, even Mundungus, whom he had tried to strangle the last time they had met.**

Many looked bemused at Harry, who grinned.

**"Kingsley, I thought you were looking after the Muggle Prime Minister?" he called across the room.**

**"He can get along without me for one night," said Kingsley, "You're more important."**

"Make his ego grow bigger", drawled Snape annoyed.

Harry just ignored his side comment.

**"Harry, guess what?" said Tonks from her perch on top of the washing machine, and she wiggled her left hand at him; a ring glistened there.**

**"You got married?" Harry yelped, looking from her to Lupin.**

The said couple just blushed again.

**"I'm sorry you couldn't be there, Harry, it was very quiet."**

**"That's brilliant, congrats"**

**"All right, all right, we'll have time for a cozy catch-up later,"roared Moody over the hubbub, and silence fell in the kitchen. Moody dropped his sacks at his feet and turned to Harry. "As Dedalus probably told you, we had to abandon Plan A. Pius Thicknesse has gone over, which gives us a big problem. He's made it an imprisonable offense to connect this house to the Floo Network, place a Portkey here, or Apparate in or out. All done in the name of your protection, to prevent You-Know-Who getting in at you. Absolutely pointless, seeing as your mother's charm does that already. What he's really done is to stop you getting out of here safely."**

Many looked very troubled.

**"Second problem: You're underage, which means you've still got the Trace on you."**

"The trace….?

**"I don't"**

**"The Trace, the Trace!" said Mad-Eye impatiently. "The charm that detects magical activity around under-seventeens, the way the Ministry finds out about underage magic! If you, or anyone around you, casts a spell to get you out of here, Thicknesse is going to know about it, and so will the Death Eaters."**

"Oh!... Well that's a problem."

"Git", muttered Ginny to her brother.

**"We can't wait for the Trace to break, because the moment you turn seventeen you'll lose all the protection your mother gave you. In short, Pius Thicknesse thinks he's got you cornered good and proper."**

Harry had to agree.

**Harry could not help but agree with the unknown Thicknesse.**

Weird….

**"So what are we going to do?"**

**"We're going to use the only means of transport left to us, the only ones the Trace can't detect, because we don't need to cast spells to use them: brooms, thestrals, and Hagrid's motorbike."**

**Harry could see flaws in this plan; however, he held his tongue to give Mad-Eye the chance to address them.**

"Smart", laughed Tonks, thinking about how paranoid her mentor was.

**"Now, your mother's charm will only break under two conditions: when you come of age, or" Moody gestured around the pristine kitchen, "you no longer call this place home. You and your aunt and uncle are going your separate ways tonight, in the full understanding that you're never going to live together again, correct?"**

"Good!" muttered Molly, looking at Harry, thinking about how horrible it was for him to live those people.

**Harry nodded.**

"Probably trying not to smile of joy" Harry whispered to Ron, who grinned at his friend.

**"So this time, when you leave, there'll be no going back, and the charm will break the moment you get outside its range. We're choosing to break it early, because the alternative is waiting for You-Know-Who to come and seize you the moment you turn seventeen."**

Everyone shuddered at what would've happened if Harry didn't leave early.

**"The one thing we've got on our side is that You-Know-Who doesn't know we're moving you tonight. We've leaked a fake trail to the Ministry: They think you're not leaving until the thirtieth. **

"Not anymore", growled Bill looking over at Snape. All turned to glare at Snape, who just stared back, a blank look on his face.

**However, this is You-Know-Who we're dealing with, so we can't rely on him getting the date wrong; he's bound to have a couple of Death Eaters patrolling the skies in this general area, just in case. So, we've given a dozen different houses every protection we can throw at them. They all look like they could be the place we're going to hide you, they've all got some connection with the Order: my house, Kingsley's place, Molly's Auntie Muriel's you get the idea."**

The Weasleys grimaced at their Auntie Muriels.

"Whoever has to go to there is never going to be able to leave", groaned Ron.

**"Yeah," said Harry, not entirely truthfully, because he could still spot a gaping hole in the plan.**

**"You'll be going to Tonks's parents. Once you're within the boundaries of the protective enchantments we've put on their house you'll be able to use a Portkey to the Burrow. Any questions?"**

**"Er yes," said Harry. "Maybe they won't know which of the twelve secure houses I'm heading for at first, but won't it be sort of obvious once" he performed a quick headcount, "fourteen of us fly off toward Tonks's parents?"**

"Exactly", Harry said agreeing to his future self.

Moody just smiled, knowing what he would be using.

**"Ah," said Moody, "I forgot to mention the key point. Fourteen of us won't be flying to Tonks's parents. There will be seven Harry Potters moving through the skies tonight, each of them with a companion, each pair heading for a different safe house."**

**From inside his cloak Moody now withdrew a flask of what looked like mud. There was no need for him to say another word; Harry understood the rest of the plan immediately.**

"No!"

**"No!" he said loudly, his voice ringing through the kitchen. "No way!"**

**"I told them you'd take it like this," said Hermione with a hint of complacency.**

Harry glared at Hermione.

**"If you think I'm going to let six people risk their lives!"**

**"Because it's the first time for all of us," said Ron.**

Molly looked sad, exactly how many times would that be? She didn't like how much danger her kids were always getting into. Even Harry, he was like a child to her

**"This is different, pretending to be me"**

**"Well, none of us really fancy it, Harry," said Fred earnestly. "Imagine if something went wrong and we were stuck as specky, scrawny gits forever."**

Most cracked a smiled.

**Harry did not smile.**

"Oh come on Harry", Fred exclaimed, "Lighten up."

**"You can't do it if I don't cooperate, you need me to give you some hair."**

**"Well, that's the plan scuppered," said George. "Obviously there's no chance at all of us getting a bit of your hair unless you cooperate."**

**"Yeah, thirteen of us against one bloke who's not allowed to use magic; we've got no chance," said Fred.**

Everyone laughed at the antics of the two twins.

Fred and George high fived.

**"Funny," said Harry, "really amusing."**

"It was!" all the students yelled.

**"If it has to come to force, then it will," growled Moody, his magical eye now quivering a little in its socket as he glared at Harry. "Everyone here's overage, Potter, and they're all prepared to take the risk."**

**Mundungus shrugged and grimaced; the magical eye swerved sideways to glance at him out of the side of Moody's head.**

"Coward", Ron said annoyed.

**"Let's have no more arguments. Time's wearing on. I want a few of your hairs, boy, now."**

**"But this is mad, there's no need"**

"You've done it, Harry", mused Tonks. "Now he's going to give you a huge lecture."

**"No need!" snarled Moody. "With You-Know-Who out there and half the Ministry on his side? Potter, if we're lucky he'll have swallowed the fake bait and he'll be planning to ambush you on the thirtieth, but he'd be mad not to have a Death Eater or two keeping an eye out, it's what I'd do. They might not be able to get at you or this house while your mother's charm holds, but it's about to break and they know the rough position of the place. Our only chance is to use decoys. Even You-Know-Who can't split himself into seven."**

**Everyone stared at Tonks weirdly.**

**Harry caught Hermione's eye and looked away at once.**

What was that about? Everyone wondered.

Dumbledore looked a little pleased. So they must have caught on by now.

**"So, Potter some of your hair, if you please."**

**Harry glanced at Ron, who grimaced at him in a just-do-it sort of way.**

"Thanks for the backup", Harry told Ron sarcastically.

"No problem mate"

**"Now!" barked Moody.**

"Now Mad-Eye", began Fred in a serious voice.

"Lets control that temper, shall we?" George said.

Moody's magical eye spun around to face the two, he scowled but turned back towards to the book.

**With all of their eyes upon him, Harry reached up to the top of his head, grabbed a hank of hair, and pulled.**

"Ow", Harry mumbled rubbing his head.

**"Good," said Moody, limping forward as he pulled the stopper out of the flask of potion. "Straight in here, if you please."**

**Harry dropped the hair into the mudlike liquid. **

"Eww" Lavender Brown squealed along with the rest of her friends.

**The moment it made contact with its surface, the potion began to froth and smoke, then, all at once, it turned a clear, bright gold.**

All the grown ups smiled at Harry.

"Gold." Started Hermione, "Doesn't the color by how pure of a soul you have. Gold is the purest", she finished impressed.

**"Ooh, you look much tastier than Crabbe and Goyle, Harry," said Hermione, before catching sight of Ron's raised eyebrows, blushing slightly, and saying, "Oh, you know what I mean Goyle's potion tasted like bogies."**

"And you would know how?", sneered Malfoy.

"2nd year", he stated simply.

**"Right then, fake Potters line up over here, please," said Moody.**

**Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, and Fleur lined up in front of Aunt Petunia's gleaming sink.**

Said people looked at each other. Of course they would be their for Harry, after all they were all fighting for the same reason, were they not? And some of the times you had to take risks for what you believe in.

**"We're one short," said Lupin.**

**"Here," said Hagrid gruffly, and he lifted Mundungus by the scruff of the neck and dropped him down beside Fleur, who wrinkled her nose pointedly and moved along to stand between Fred and George instead.**

Ginny scowled, she was liking her sister and law less and less by the moment.

Fleur ignored the pointed looks, and leaned against Bill's chest.

**"I'm a soldier, I'd sooner be a protector," said Mundungus.**

Harry laughed bitterly.

**"Shut it," growled Moody. "As I've already told you, you spineless worm, any Death Eaters we run into will be aiming to capture Potter, not kill him. Dumbledore always said You-Know-Who would want to finish Potter in person. It'll be the protectors who have got the most to worry about, the Death Eaters'll want to kill them."**

All the protectors looked at one another just as the fake potters had. Of course they were all worried and a little scared, but they someone had to be strong, didn't they?

**Mundungus did not look particularly reassured, but Moody was already pulling half a dozen eggcup-sized glasses from inside his cloak, which he handed out, before pouring a little Polyjuice Potion into each one.**

**"Altogether, then ..."**

**Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Fleur, and Mundungus drank. All of them gasped and grimaced as the potion hit their throats; At once, their features began to bubble and distort like hot wax. **

Many people looked disgusted.

**Hermione and Mundungus were shooting upward; Ron, Fred, and George were shrinking; their hair was darkening, Hermione's and Fleur's appearing to shoot backward into their skulls.**

Fleur touched her silky blonde hair.

**Moody, quite unconcerned, was now loosening the ties of the large sacks he had brought with him. When he straightened up again, there were six Harry Potters gasping and panting in front of him.**

"Now that's gotta be the weirdest thing ever", Harry laughed.

**Fred and George turned to each other and said together, "Wow we're identical!"**

**"I dunno, though, I think I'm still better-looking," said Fred, examining his reflection in the kettle.**

"As if", argued George.

**"Bah," said Fleur, checking herself in the microwave door, "Bill, don't look at me I'm 'ideous."**

"Should I feel insulted?", asked Harry.

"I'm sorry 'arry."

**"Those whose clothes are a bit roomy, I've got smaller here," said Moody, indicating the first sack, "and vice versa. Don't forget the glasses, there's six pairs in the side pocket. And when you're dressed, there's luggage in the other sack."**

**The real Harry thought that this might just be the most bizarre thing he had ever seen, and he had seen some extremely odd things. He watched as his six doppelgangers rummaged in the sacks, pulling out sets of clothes, putting on glasses, stuffing their own things away. He felt like asking them to show a little more respect for privacy as they all began stripping off with impunity, clearly more at ease with displaying his body than they would have been with their own.**

"Thanks guys"

They all just shrugged, a smile tugging at their lips.

**"I knew Ginny was lying about that tattoo," said Ron, looking down at his bare chest.**

Harry and Ginny blushed furishly, while the Weasley brothers all gave Harry that 'older brother look'.

**"Harry, your eyesight really is awful," said Hermione, as she put on glasses.**

"Of course, he just wears them for fun", teased Ron.

Hermione just rolled her eyes, though there was a red starting up her neck.

"Just read", she ordered.

**Once dressed, the fake Harrys took rucksacks and owl cages, each containing a stuffed snowy owl, from the second sack.**

**"Good," said Moody, as at last seven dressed, bespectacled, and luggage-laden Harrys faced him. "The pairs will be as follows: Mundungus will be traveling with me, by broom"**

**"Why'm I with you?" grunted the Harry nearest the back door.**

"Cause you're a slimly little git-"

"Ronald!"

**"Because you're the one that needs watching," growled Moody, and sure enough, his magical eye did not waver from Mundungus as he continued, "Arthur and Fred"**

The father and son grinned at each other.

**"I'm George," said the twin at whom Moody was pointing. "Can't you even tell us apart when we're Harry?"**

**"Sorry, George"**

**"I'm only yanking your wand, I'm Fred really"**

**"Enough messing around!" snarled Moody. "The other one, George or Fred or whoever you are you're with Remus. Miss Delacour"**

**"I'm taking Fleur on a thestral," said Bill. "She's not that fond of brooms."**

**Fleur walked over to stand beside him, giving him a soppy, slavish look that Harry hoped with all his heart would never appear on his face again.**

Everyone laughed at the look on Harry's face.

**"Miss Granger with Kingsley, again by thestral." **

**Hermione looked reassured as she answered Kingsley's smile; **

"Of course, know Hermione to look up to the work figure." Ron chuckled.

"Hey!" Hermione shoved him playfully.

**Harry knew that Hermione too lacked confidence on a broomstick.**

**"Which leaves you and me, Ron!" said Tonks brightly, knocking over a mug tree as she waved at him.**

Everyone laughed at Tonks, who muttered, "Everytime".

**Ron did not look quite as pleased as Hermione.**

Tonks did look a little upset, "I'm not that bad", She pouted.

**"An' you're with me, Harry. That all righ'?" said Hagrid, looking a little anxious. "We'll be on the bike, brooms an' thestrals can't take me weight, see. Not a lot o' room on the seat with me on it, though, so you'll be in the sidecar."**

Seamus started cracking up, along with Ron and Dean.

**"That's great," said Harry, not altogether truthfully.**

"Tut Tut".

**"We think the Death Eaters will expect you to be on a broom," said Moody, who seemed to guess how Harry was feeling. "Snape's had plenty of time to tell them everything about you he's never mentioned before, so if we do run into any Death Eaters, we're betting they'll choose one of the Potters who looks at home on a broomstick. All right then," he went on, tying up the sack with the fake Potters' clothes in it and leading the way back to the door, "I make it three minutes until we're supposed to leave. No point locking the back door, it won't keep the Death Eaters out when they come looking. Come on ..."**

**Harry hurried to gather his rucksack, Firebolt, and Hedwig's cage and followed the group to the dark back garden.**

**On every side broomsticks were leaping into hands; Hermione had already been helped up onto a great black thestral by Kingsley, Fleur onto the other by Bill. Hagrid was standing ready beside the motorbike, goggles on.**

**"Is this it? Is this Sirius's bike?"**

Harry had a frown on his face, thinking of his Godfather.

**"The very same," said Hagrid, beaming down at Harry. "An' the last time yeh was on it, Harry, I could fit yeh in one hand!"**

All the girls cooed.

Harry just blushed.

"You must have been so cute!" squealed Padma.

**Harry could not help but feel a little humiliated as he got into the sidecar. It placed him several feet below everybody else: Ron smirked at the sight of him sitting there like a child in a bumper car. **

As did the present Ron.

**Harry stuffed his rucksack and broomstick down by his feet and rammed Hedwig's cage between his knees. He was extremely uncomfortable.**

**"Arthur's done a bit o' tinkerin'," said Hagrid, quite oblivious to Harry's discomfort. **

Molly glared at he husband, nothing better go wrong. She knew how much Arthur loved the muggle equipment, but he wasn't a muggle, therefore didn't know as much.

Arthur shifted slightly under the glare of his wife. Hopefully nothing went wrong….

**He settled himself astride the motorcycle, which creaked slightly and sank inches into the ground. "It's got a few tricks up its sleeves now. Tha' one was my idea." He pointed a thick finger at a purple button near the speedometer.**

**"Please be careful, Hagrid." said Mr. Weasley, who was standing beside them, holding his broomstick. "I'm still not sure that was advisable and it's certainly only to be used in emergencies."**

**"All right, then." said Moody. "Everyone ready, please. I want us all to leave at exactly the same time or the whole point of the diversion's lost."**

Everyone was holding their breath.

**Everybody motioned their heads. "Hold tight now, Ron," said Tonks, and Harry saw Ron throw a forcing, guilty look at Lupin before placing his hands on each side of her waist. **

Harry laughed at his friends discomfort, "Nice mate" he slapped him on the back.

**Hagrid kicked the motorbike into life: It roared like a dragon, and the sidecar began to vibrate.**

**"Good luck, everyone," shouted Moody. "See you all in about an hour at the Burrow. On the count of three. One ... two . THREE."**

**There was a great roar from the motorbike, and Harry felt the sidecar give a nasty lurch. He was rising through the air fast, his eyes watering slightly, hair whipped back off his face. Around him brooms were soaring upward too; the long black tail of a thestral flicked past. His legs, jammed into the sidecar by Hedwig's cage and his rucksack, were already sore and starting to go numb. So great was his discomfort that he almost forgot to take a last glimpse of number four Privet Drive. By the time he looked over the edge of the sidecar he could no longer tell which one it was.**

The whole hall seemed to be on the edge of their seats.

**And then, out of nowhere, out of nothing, they were surrounded. **

Everyone groaned.

"What's going to happen!", asked a nervous first year.

"He will be fine", a 6th year assured the young one.

**At least thirty hooded figures, suspended in midair, formed a vast circle in the middle of which the Order members had risen, oblivious.**

**Screams, a blaze of green light on every side: Hagrid gave a yell and the motorbike rolled over. Harry lost any sense of where they were. Streetlights above him, yells around him, he was clinging to the sidecar for dear life. Hedwig's cage, the Firebolt, and his rucksack slipped from beneath his knees. **

**"No. HELP!"**

**The broomstick spun too, but he just managed to seize the strap of his rucksack and the top of the cage as the motorbike swung the right way up again. A second's relief, and then another burst of green light. The owl screeched and fell to the floor of the cage.**

"No" Yelled Harry. It can't be. Not his owl. His only company at Privet Drive could not be gone.

**"No. NO!"**

**The motorbike zoomed forward; Harry glimpsed hooded Death Eaters scattering as Hagrid blasted through their circle.**

**"Hedwig, Hedwig!".**

**But the owl lay motionless and pathetic as a toy on the floor of her cage. He could not take it in, and his terror for the others was paramount. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a mass of people moving, flares of green light, two pairs of people on brooms soaring off into the distance, but he could not tell who they were.**

**"Hagrid, we've got to go back, we've got to go back!" he yelled over the thunderous roar of the engine, pulling out his wand, ramming Hedwig's cage into the floor, refusing to believe that she was dead. "Hagrid, TURN AROUND!"**

"No!" shouted every student and teacher.

"But-

"Absolutely not. Hagrid, so help me if you turn around-" Molly left her threat hanging while Hagrid gulped.

**"My job's ter get you there safe, Harry!" bellow Hagrid, and he opened the throttle. **

"Good", Molly nodded.

**"Stop. STOP!" Harry shouted, but as he looked back again two jets of green light flew past his left ear: Four Death Eaters had broken away from the circle and were pursuing them, aiming for Hagrid's broad back. Hagrid swerved, but the Death Eaters were keeping up with the bike; more curses shot after them, and Harry had to sink low into the sidecar to avoid them. Wriggling around he cried, "Stupefy!" and a red bolt of light shot from his own wand, cleaving a gap between the four pursuing Death Eaters as they scattered to avoid it.**

"Constant Vigilance" you can guess who shouted.

**"Hold on, Harry, this'll do for 'em!" roared Hagrid, and Harry looked up just in time to see Hagrid slamming a thick finger into a green button near the fuel gauge. A wall, a solid black wall, erupted out of the exhaust pipe. Craning his neck, Harry saw it expand into being in midair. Three of the Death Eaters swerved and avoided it, but the fourth was not so lucky; He vanished from view and then dropped like a boulder from behind it, his broomstick broken into pieces. One of his fellows slowed up to save him, but they and the airborne wall were swallowed by darkness as Hagrid leaned low over the handlebars and sped up.**

"Go Hagrid", cheered Gryffindor.

**More Killing Curses flew past Harry's head from the two remaining Death Eaters' wands; **

Everyone shuddered. No kid of only 16 or 17 should Have to go through with this.

**they were aiming for Hagrid. Harry responded with further Stunning Spells: Red and green collided in midair in a shower of multicolored sparks, and Harry thought wildly of fireworks, and the Muggles below who would have no idea what was happening.**

"No time for that Harry" Remus said.

Moody nodded in agreement.

**"Here we go again, Harry, hold on!" yelled Hagrid, and he jabbed at a second button. This time a great net burst from the bike's exhaust, but the Death Eaters were ready for it. Not only did they swerve to avoid it, but the companion who had slowed to save their unconscious friend had caught up. He bloomed suddenly out of the darkness and now three of them were pursuing the motorbike, all shooting curses after it.**

**"This'll do it, Harry, hold on tight!" yelled Hagrid, and Harry saw him slam his whole hand onto the purple button beside the speedometer.**

**With an unmistakable bellowing roar, dragon fire burst from the exhaust, white-hot and blue, and the motorbike shot forward like a bullet with a sound of wrenching metal. Harry saw the Death Eaters swerve out of sight to avoid the deadly trail of flame, and at the same time felt the sidecar sway ominously: Its metal connections to the bike had splintered with the force of acceleration.**

**"It's all righ', Harry!" bellowed Hagrid, now thrown flat onto the back by the surge of speed; nobody was steering now, and the sidecar was starting to twist violently in the bike's slipstream.**

Nobody looked relieved, that didn't look good.

**"I'm on it, Harry, don' worry!" Hagrid yelled, and from inside his jacket pocket he pulled his flowery pink umbrella.**

"What", sputtered Ron.

Those who knew Hagrid's broken wand, looked terrified.

**"Hagrid! No! Let me!"**

"Please"

**"REPARO!"**

**There was a deafening bang and the sidecar broke away from the bike completely. Harry sped forward, propelled by the impetus of the bike's flight, then the sidecar began to lose height.**

"Hagrid!" groaned everyone.

**In desperation Harry pointed his wand at the sidecar and shouted,**

**"Wingardium Leviosa!"**

"Are you sure your doing it right" asked Ron in a mock voice.

"I don't know Ron, I think it's more of a sweep", replied Harry in the same tone.

Hermione just slapped the two laughing boys.

**The sidecar rose like a cork, unsteerable but at least still airborne. He had but a split second's relief, however, as more curses streaked past him: The three Death Eaters were closing in.**

Many people who had totally forgotten about those death eaters, were now biting their nails in worry.

**"I'm comin', Harry!" Hagrid yelled from out of the darkness, but Harry could feel the sidecar beginning to sink again: Crouching as low as he could, he pointed at the middle of the oncoming figures and yelled, "Impedimenta!"**

**The jinx hit the middle Death Eater in the chest; **

"Good aim", Moody approved. He and Kinglsy shared looks, h would be a great auror.

**For a moment the man was absurdly spread-eagled in midair as though he had hit an invisible barrier: One of his fellows almost collided with him. Then the sidecar began to fall in earnest, and the remaining Death Eater shot a curse so close to Harry that he had to duck below the rim of the car, knocking out a tooth on the edge of his seat.**

"Ow", groaned Harry rubbing his tooth.

**"I'm comin', Harry, I'm comin'!"**

"Then please hurry up"

**A huge hand seized the back of Harry's robes and hoisted him out of the plummeting sidecar; Harry pulled his rucksack with him as he dragged himself onto the motorbike's seat and found himself back-to-back with Hagrid. As they soared upward, away from the two remaining Death Eaters, Harry spat blood out of his mouth, pointed his wand at the falling sidecar, and yelled, "Confringo!"**

**He knew a dreadful, gut-wrenching pang for Hedwig as it exploded; the Death Eater nearest it was blasted off his broom and fell from sight; his companion fell back and vanished.**

"At least you got rid of them", said Collin Creevy.

"For now", muttered Harry.

**"Harry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," moaned Hagrid, "I shouldn'ta tried ter repair it myself ¨Yeh've got no room". **

**"It's not a problem, just keep flying!" Harry shouted back, as two more Death Eaters emerged out of the darkness, drawing closer.**

"Oh great. More", said Ron sarcastically.

**As the curses came shooting across the intervening space again, Hagrid swerved and zigzagged: Harry knew that Hagrid did not dare use the dragon-fire button again, with Harry seated so insecurely. Harry sent Stunning Spell after Stunning Spell back at their pursuers, barely holding them off. He shot another blocking jinx at them: The closest Death Eater swerved to avoid it and his hood slipped, and by the red light of his next Stunning Spell, Harry saw the strangely blank face of Stan Shunpike.**

"What?"

"The one who works on the Knight Bus?" asked Harry.

**"Expelliarmus!" Harry yelled.**

"Harry!" yelled everyone exasperated.

"He's obviously is under the imperius curse." Harry said in his defence.

"The time for disarming is gone, Potter", Moody growled.

**"That's him, it's him, it's the real one!"**

"Crap" Surprising it was Hermione who said that.

**The hooded Death Eater's shout reached Harry even above the thunder of the motorbike's engine: Next moment, both pursuers had fallen back and disappeared from view.**

"What's going on?" asked Molly frightened.

"That doesn't sound right" shared Remus

**"Harry, what's happened?" bellowed Hagrid. "Where've they gone?"**

**"I don't know!"**

**But Harry was afraid: The hooded Death Eater had shouted, "It's the real one!"; how had he known? He gazed around at the apparently empty darkness and felt its menace. Where were they?**

"We all want to know", Ginny said, squeezing Harry's arm, who gave a small smile.

**He clambered around on the seat to face forward and seized hold of the back of Hagrid's jacket.**

**"Hagrid, do the dragon-fire thing again, let's get out of here!"**

**"Hold on tight, then, Harry!"**

**There was a deafening, screeching roar again and the white-blue fire shot from the exhaust: Harry felt himself slipping backwards off what little of the seat he had. Hagrid flung backward upon him, barely maintaining his grip on the handlebars. "I think we've lost 'em Harry, I think we've done it!" yelled Hagrid.**

"Constant Vigilance" Tonk's shouted, smiling at her mentor, who scowled.

**But Harry was not convinced; Fear lapped at him as he looked left and right for pursuers he was sure would come... Why had they fallen back? One of them had still had a wand... It's him... it's the real one... They had said it right after he had tried to Disarm Stan...**

**"We're nearly there, Harry, we've nearly made it!" shouted Hagrid.**

"Don't'" yelled Ron. "You'll jinks it".

**Harry felt the bike drop a little, though the lights down on the ground still seemed remote as stars.**

**Then the scar on his forehead burned like fire: **

Harry, Ron, and Hermione all shared a look. "No!" they all thought.

**as a Death Eater appeared on either side of the bike, two Killing Curses missed Harry by millimeters, cast from beshind. And then Harry saw him. Voldemort was flying like smoke on the wind, without broomstick or thestral to hold him, his snake-like face gleaming out of the blackness, his white fingers raising his wand again.**

"God, he's there", a 3rd year Hufflepuff said scared.

"How are you going to get out of there?" asked Molly frightfully. Of course she was scared, almost all of her family was out there and Harry was like a son to her.

**Hagrid let out a bellow of fear and steered the motorbike into a vertical dive. Clinging on for dear life, Harry sent Stunning Spells flying at random into the whirling night. He saw a body fly past him and knew he had hit one of them, **

"Great aim Potter", Kingsly complemented.

Harry blushed at the compliment.

**but then he heard a bang and saw sparks from the engine; the motorbike spiraled through the air, completely out of control.**

"No!" everyone shouted, even Dumbledore was looking paler than normal.

**Green jets of light shot past them again. Harry had no idea which way was up, which down: His scar was still burning; he expected to die at any second. A hooded figure on a broomstick was feet from him, he saw it raise its arm.**

Every person was sickly white, listening intently.

**"NO!"**

**With a shout of fury Hagrid launched himself off the bike at the Death Eater; to his horror, Harry saw both Hagrid and the Death Eater, falling out of sight, their combined weight too much for the broomstick **

"Hagrid", Harry yelled.

"Don't worry about me Harry, I'll be fine", Hagrid reasoned.

**Barely gripping the plummeting bike with his knees, Harry heard Voldemort scream, "Mine!"**

"What am I?" asked Harry, "His favorite teddy bear", he said dryly.

Many laughed, others still on edge.

**It was over: He could not see or hear where Voldemort was; he glimpsed another Death Eater swooping out of the way and heard, "Avada "**

**Hermione looked as if she was about to cry. Her and Ginny both gripped Harry hard as if wanting to know he was there now and perfectly fine.**

**As the pain from Harry's scar forced his eyes shut, his wand acted of its own accord. He felt it drag his hand around like some great magnet, saw a spurt of golden fire through his half-closed eyelids, heard a crack and a scream of fury. **

"That's th- that's not possible." Studdered Hermione, "Is it", she asked Dumbledore.

"Ah, Dear. I do not know." he answered honestly.

Many remained confused.

**The remaining Death Eater yelled; Voldemort screamed, "NO!" Somehow, Harry found his nose an inch from the dragon-fire button. He punched it with his wand-free hand and the bike shot more flames into the air, hurtling straight toward the ground.**

**"Hagrid!" Harry called, holding on to the bike for dear life. "Hagrid Accio Hagrid!"**

"That's going to bring you to him", Hermione told him.

"Good. Better to get away from You-Know-Who" Ron said.

**The motorbike sped up, sucked towards the earth. Face level with the handlebars, Harry could see nothing but distant lights growing nearer and nearer: He was going to crash and there was nothing he could do about it. Behind him came another scream, "Your wand, Selwyn, give me your wand!"**

**He felt Voldemort before he saw him. Looking sideways, he stared into the red eyes and was sure they would be the last thing he ever saw: Voldemort preparing to curse him once more.**

Many people looked at Harry in shock. He knew he was going to die, and he still embraced it, or at least was ok with dying.

**And then Voldemort vanished. **

Everyone let out the breaths they didn't know they were holding.

**Harry looked down and saw Hagrid spread-eagled on the ground below him. He pulled hard at the handlebars to avoid hitting him, groped for the brake, but with an earsplitting, ground trembling crash, he smashed into a muddy pond.**

"At least you're safe", Molly said.

"As if were ever safe", mumbled Harry.

"The chapter is over", Padma told them all.

"Hand over the book", Tonks said smiling. As the book floated over to her, she leaned out to catch it, and fell off the bench.

Laughing everyone listened as she began to read, **"Fallen Warrior".**

Hope you liked it. 

Ok so after every chapter I will ask 3 questions about Harry Potter and the first three people to answer correctly will get the chapter dedicated to them. Each person can only answer 1 question per chapter. Please Review and I will update soon! 

Question 1: What chapter in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix does Dumbledore leave Hogwarts?

Question 2: In what book does Harry learn about Horcruxes?

Question 3: What are Snapes last words before he dies?


	7. Chapter 5 The Fallen Warrior

**Hey! Sorry bout updating pretty late, (or later than normal) The thing was I had the documents on my dad's laptop and he went out of town. So stupid me, I forgot to save them to my computer. Anyways, point was I couldn't update this whole week. **

**I got a lot of reviews and alerts for my last chapter. I have to say when I read them I couldn't stop smiling. They made my day just when ya'll said you like it and can't wait for next chapter. So keep reviewing. **

**Anyways for the 3 questions **

**Question 1- **Hollywollypolly

**Question 2- **edboy4926

**Question 3- **Annabeth124

Dedicated to you:

**"Hagrid?"**

**Harry struggled to raise himself out of the debris of metal and leather that surrounded him; his hands sank into inches of muddy water as he tried to stand. He could not understand where Voldemort had gone and expected him to swoop out of the darkness at any moment.**

"I would guess you landed within the protection shield." Hermione said in a very formal voice.

"Very good Ms. Granger", Dumbledore smiled at the Gryffindor.

**Something hot and wet was trickling down his chin and from his forehead. **

"Blood".

**He crawled out of the pond and stumbled toward the great dark mass on the ground that was Hagrid.**

**"Hagrid? Hagrid, talk to me"**

**But the dark mass did not stir.**

Hermione was silently crying, as many of the DA looked down.

Harry was just sitting there. No Hagrid couldn't be dead. He already lost his owl, not his giant friend.

**"Who's there? Is it Potter? Are you Harry Potter?"**

**Harry did not recognize the man's voice. Then a woman shouted. "They've crashed. Ted! Crashed in the garden!"**

"My parents", Tonks beamed at the mention of her family and that they were safe.

"That means he did get within the protection shields." Ron said with a relief.

**Harry's head was swimming.**

"Hate that feeling" Seamus muttered.

Everyone looked at him weirdly, while his best friend Dean was on the floor laughing.

Between breaths, Dean said "3rd year".

**"Hagrid," he repeated stupidly, and his knees buckled.**

**The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back on what felt like cushions, with a burning sensation in his ribs and right arm. His missing tooth had been regrown. The scar on his forehead was still throbbing.**

**"Hagrid?"**

"Are you ever going to stop saying that?" asked Malfoy in a board and annoyed voice.

Harry just ignored him, but not before returning the glare.

**He opened his eyes and saw that he was lying on a sofa in an unfamiliar, lamplit sitting room. His rucksack lay on the floor a short distance away, wet and muddy. A fair-haired, big-bellied man was watching Harry anxiously.**

**"Hagrid's fine, son," said the man, "the wife's seeing to him now. How are you feeling? Anything else broken? I've fixed your ribs, your tooth, and your arm. I'm Ted, by the way, Ted Tonks, Dora's father."**

"Ughh" groaned Tonks. "I hate that nickname!"

**Harry sat up too quickly. Lights popped in front of his eyes and he felt sick and giddy.**

**"Voldemort"**

"Right to the point" laughed George, but quickly shut up at the look his mother gave him. Anyone who knew Molly, would be metal if they could stand her glares.

**"Easy, now," said Ted Tonks, placing a hand on Harry's shoulder and pushing him back against the cushions. **

Madam Pomfrey nodded. That boy most definitely shouldn't be getting up.

**"That was a nasty crash you just had. What happened, anyway? Something go wrong with the bike? Arthur Weasley overstretch himself again, him and his Muggle contraptions?"**

Arthur turned red of embarrassment.

**"No," said Harry, as his scar pulsed like an open wound. "Death Eaters, loads of them, we were chased"**

**"Death Eaters?" said Ted sharply. "What d'you mean, Death Eaters? I thought they didn't know you were being moved tonight, I thought"**

"They didn't" everyone glared at Snape. It was his fault if anyone got hurt. And he would pay if anyone did….

**"They knew," said Harry.**

**Ted Tonks looked up at the ceiling as though he could see through it to the sky above.**

All eyes seemed to drift up to the enchanted ceiling in the hall.

**"Well, we know our protective charms hold, then, don't we? They shouldn't be able to get within a hundred yards of the place in any direction."**

"And that would be why Voldemort disappeared" Harry concluded.

How lucky he had gotten, everyone thought.

**Now Harry understood why Voldemort had vanished; it had been at the point when the motorbike crossed the barrier of the Order's charms. He only hoped they would continue to work: He imagined Voldemort, a hundred yards above them as they spoke, looking for a way to penetrate what Harry visualized as a great transparent bubble.**

Everyone shuddered.

**He swung his legs off the sofa; he needed to see Hagrid with his own eyes before he would believe that he was alive. He had barely stood up, however, when a door opened and Hagrid squeezed through it, his face covered in mud and blood, limping a little but miraculously alive.**

"Yay!" All the people yelled, mainly Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

They felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of them.

**"Harry!"**

**Knocking over two delicate tables and an aspidistra,**

"For a second I thought it was Tonks"

Tonks stuck her tongue out at Bill Weasley.

**he covered the floor between them in two strides and pulled Harry into a hug that nearly cracked his newly repaired ribs. "Blimey, Harry, how did yeh get out o' that? I thought we were both goners."**

"Way to believe in me". Harry grumbled.

Ron laughed.

**"Yeah, me too. I can't believe"**

**Harry broke off. He had just noticed the woman who had entered the room behind Hagrid.**

**"You!" he shouted, and he thrust his hand into his pocket, but it was empty.**

"Oh" Tonks said. "I see where this is going. She is not going to like that."

**"Your wand's here, son," said Ted, tapping it on Harry's arm. "It fell right beside you, I picked it up...And that's my wife you're shouting at."**

**"Oh, I'm- I'm sorry."**

"Real tactful Harry", scolded Hermione.

**As she moved forward into the room, Mrs. Tonks's resemblance to her sister Bellatrix became much less pronounced: **

**Everyone began to realize what he was talking about. **

**Her hair was a light soft brown and her eyes were wider and kinder. Nevertheless, she looked a little haughty after Harry's exclamation.**

"Wouldn't you if you were just accused of being Bellatrix?" asked Ginny, playfully slapping Harry's arm.

**"What happened to our daughter?" she asked. "Hagrid said you were ambushed; where is Nymphadora?"**

Tonk's hair turned bright red and she began to get mad. "That's not my name" she said, or you could say shouted.

**"I don't know," said Harry. "We don't know what happened to anyone else."**

Harry looked down. If anyone had gotten hurt it would be all his fault. How would he be able to live if he knew he was the reason for someone's death.

**She and Ted exchanged looks. A mixture of fear and guilt gripped Harry at the sight of their expressions, if any of the others had died, it was his fault, all his fault. He had consented to the plan, given them his hair...**

"There's my noble little git" laughed Ginny. "I was wondering when he was going to show up."

**"The Portkey," he said, remembering all of a sudden. "We've got to get back to the Burrow and find out then we'll be able to send you word, or- or Tonks will, once she's"**

**"Dora'll be ok, 'Dromeda," said Ted. "She knows her stuff, she's been in plenty of tight spots with the Aurors. The Portkey's through here," he added to Harry. "It's supposed to leave in three minutes, if you want to take it."**

"Hurry up. You can't miss it." Fussed Mrs. Weasley.

**"Yeah, we do," said Harry. He seized his rucksack, swung it onto his shoulders. "I"**

**He looked at Mrs. Tonks, wanting to apologize for the state of fear in which he left her and for which he felt so terribly responsible, but no words occurred to him that he did not seem hollow and insincere.**

Many people shook their head. Only Harry would feel responsible about everyone.

**"I'll tell Tonks- Dora to send word, when she... Thanks for patching us up, thanks for everything."**

**He was glad to leave the room and follow Ted Tonks along a short hallway and into a bedroom. Hagrid came after them, bending low to avoid hitting his head on the door lintel.**

**"There you go, son. That's the Portkey."**

**Mr. Tonks was pointing to a small, silver-backed hairbrush lying on the dressing table.**

"Always the weirdest types of thing." Said Harry, thinking back to when he went to the World Cup Game and the portkey was an old shoe.

**"Thanks," said Harry, reaching out to place a finger on it, ready to leave.**

**"Wait a moment," said Hagrid, looking around. "Harry, where's Hedwig?"**

"Hagrid", groaned Ms. McGonagall. He was not making it better.

Harry looked down at the reminder as his owl.

**"She... she got hit," said Harry.**

**The realization crashed over him: He felt ashamed of himself as the tears stung his eyes. The owl had been his companion, his one great link with the magical world whenever he had been forced to return to the Dursleys.**

The teachers looked mad again remembering what Harry had to go through at home.

**Hagrid reached out a great hand and patted him painfully on the shoulder.**

"Sorry." Hagrid told Harry ruefully.

Harry smiled sadly at Hagrid.

**"Never mind," he said gruffly, "Never mind. She had a great old life"**

**"Hagrid!" said Ted Tonks warningly, as the hairbrush glowed bright blue, and Hagrid only just got his forefinger to it in time.**

"Good. Wouldn't want to know what would happen if he didn't." Tonks said.

"Nothing good." Dumbledore replied.

**With a jerk behind the navel as though an invisible hook and line had dragged him forward, Harry was pulled into nothingness, spinning uncontrollably, **

Without realizing it, Harry was shaking. He remembered the portkey that had led him to Voldemort's grave. Hearing all this was worse than he thought. He closed his eyes, hoping no one would see. Fortunately, no one did. No one, except Ginny.

She glanced at him and realized how pale he was. She grabbed his hand. When he looked up she blushed, but didn't let go and neither did Harry.

**his finger glued to the Portkey as he and Hagrid hurtled away from Mr. Tonks. Second later, Harry's feet slammed onto hard ground and he fell onto his hands and knees in the yard of the Burrow. He heard screams. **

"Screams" asked Mrs. Weasley tensing. She didn't think she could take much more of this.

"Relax Molly dear" Arthur said soothingly. "Its probably just you and Ginny.

Mrs. Weasley didn't stop shaking, though she did relax a little.

**Throwing aside the no longer glowing hairbrush, Harry stood up, swaying slightly, and saw Mrs. Weasley and Ginny running down the steps by the back door **

"See."

**as Hagrid, who had also collapsed on landing, clambered laboriously to his feet.**

**"Harry? You are the real Harry? What happened? Where are the others?" cried Mrs. Weasley.**

**"What d'you mean? Isn't anyone else back?" Harry panted.**

**The answer was clearly etched in Mrs. Weasley's pale face.**

Not good. Every single person seemed to be sucked into the book. They all wanted to know what happened to their friends.

**"The Death Eaters were waiting for us," Harry told her, "We were surrounded the moment we took off. They knew it was tonight. I don't know what happened to anyone else, four of them chased us, it was all we could do to get away, and then Voldemort caught up with us"**

"Harry" Ron groaned only loud enough for him to hear, "You're going to give her a heart attack."

"Sorry mate."

**He could hear the self-justifying note in his voice, the plea for her to understand why he did not know what had happened to her sons.**

**"Thank goodness you're all right," she said, pulling him into a hug he did not feel he deserved.**

Some of the words like "Noble" and "Git" were flying around the room.

**"Haven't go' any brandy, have yeh, Molly?" asked Hagrid a little shakily, "Fer medicinal purposes?"**

Everyone snorted at Hagrid's comment.

"Yep. That's the reason." Laughed Ron.

**She could have summoned it by magic, but as she hurried back toward the crooked house, Harry knew that she wanted to hide her face. He turned to Ginny and she answered his unspoken plea for information at once.**

"Ah Lovers", sighed Luna dreamily.

Said "Lovers" blushed bright red and looked anywhere but each other.

**"Ron and Tonks should have been back first, but they missed their Portkey, it came back without them," she said, pointing at a rusty oil can lying on the ground nearby. **

Hermione gasped and clutched Rons arm, without realizing it.

Remus's jaw locked when he heard that sentence.

**"And that one," she pointed at an ancient sneaker, "should have been Dad and Fred's, they were supposed to be second. You and Hagrid were third and," she checked her watch, "if they made it, George and Lupin aught to be back in about a minute."**

The Hall was very quiet as many worried over their loved ones or friends.

What would happen if they didn't make or if something happened to them.

**Mrs. Weasley reappeared carrying a bottle of brandy, which she handed to Hagrid. He uncorked it and drank it straight down in one.**

**"Mum!" shouted Ginny pointing to a spot several feet away.**

Everyone tensed.

**A blue light had appeared in the darkness: It grew larger and brighter, and Lupin and George appeared, spinning and then falling. Harry knew immediately that there was something wrong: **

"No, No, No", muttered Molly into her husbands shoulder. He just rubbed her back and said encouraging words.

Fred looked over at his brother. Praying that he was ok. That he was at least alive!** (A/N So sad, since it's him who died not George.)**

**Lupin was supporting George, who was unconscious and whose face was covered in blood.**

All of the Weasley's were now looking at George with a worried expression.

This just made Fred more scared for his brother.

**Harry ran forward and seized George's legs. Together, he and Lupin carried George into the house and through the kitchen to the living room, where they laid him on the sofa. As the lamplight fell across George's head, Ginny gasped and Harry's stomach lurched: **

Oh No! Oh No! Oh No!

**One of George's ears was missing. The side of his head and neck were drenched in wet, shockingly scarlet blood.**

Mrs. Weasley being the over- protective mother she was, was at George's side in an instant.

"Get urf mum", he muttered as she fussed over him.

As she finally, and reluctantly stopped fussing, George realized that everyone was staring at the side of his head.

"It's not gone yet. Is it?" he said frustrated at all the staring.

At once, they looked away.

**No sooner had Mrs. Weasley bent over her son that Lupin grabbed Harry by the upper arm and dragged him, none too gently, back into the kitchen, where Hagrid was still attempting to ease his bulk through the back door.**

"Hey" everyone shouted.

The nurse looked very angry at how he was being treated. Was if he got hurt! Hadn't he been hurt enough, she thought.

"I'm probably just checking to make sure it's him.", Remus said trying to reassure everyone.

**"Oi!" said Hagrid indignantly, "Le' go of him! Le' go of Harry!"**

**Lupin ignored him.**

**"What creature sat in the corner the first time that Harry Potter visited my office at Hogwarts?" he said, giving Harry a small shake. "Answer me!"**

"A grindylow" Harry said, remembering when Lupin taught. He was by far the best teacher.

The warewolf smiled at him.

**"A- a grindylow in a tank, wasn't it?"**

**Lupin released Harry and fell back against a kitchen cupboard.**

**"Wha' was tha' about?" roared Hagrid.**

**"I'm sorry, Harry, but I had to check," said Lupin tersely. "We've been betrayed. Voldemort knew that you were being moved tonight and the only people who could have told him were directly involved in the plan. You might have been an impostor."**

"What about Hagrid" asked Ron clueless.

Hermione looked at him in a 'really' way.

**"So why aren' you checkin' me?" panted Hagrid, still struggling with the door.**

"You're half giant, Hagrid." Hermione told him softly.

Hagrid just blushed.

Draco sneered. "A half giant".

**"You're half-giant," said Lupin, looking up at Hagrid. "The Polyjuice Potion is designed for human use only."**

**"None of the Order would have told Voldemort we were moving tonight," said Harry. The idea was dreadful to him, he could not believe it of any of them. "Voldemort only caught up with me toward the end, he didn't know which one I was in the beginning. If he'd been in on the plan he'd have known from the start I was the one with Hagrid."**

"I don't think anyone would sell me out." Harry said loudly.

**"Voldemort caught up with you?" said Lupin sharply. "What happened? How did you escape?"**

"Woah. Slow with the questions." Fred laughed.

Lupin just glanced at the boys. Being the professional one he is, he merely looked away and laughed.

**Harry explained how the Death Eaters pursuing them had seemed to recognize him as the true Harry, how they had abandoned the chase, how they must have summoned Voldemort, who had appeared just before he and Hagrid had reached the sanctuary of Tonks's parents.**

**"They recognized you? But how? What had you done?"**

"We've been over this—"

"Fred, George. Knock it off" Molly yelled at them.

**"I..." Harry tried to remember; the whole journey seemed like a blur of panic and confusion. **

"That seems to happen to you when you're at the height of danger." Harry said.

**"I saw Stan Shunpike... You know, the bloke who was the conductor on the Knight Bus? And I tried to Disarm him instead of-well, he doesn't know what he's doing, does he? He must be Imperiused!"**

**Lupin looked aghast.**

"You just pissed him off!" sang the twins, while Molly looked ready to explode.

**"Harry, the time for Disarming is past! These people are trying to capture and kill you! At least Stun if you aren't prepared to kill!"**

"Our little Harry isn't much of a killer, are you" George told Lupin as if that conversation just happened.

Molly had her head in her hands.

**"We were hundreds of feet up! Stan's not himself, and if I Stunned him and he'd fallen, he'd have died the same as if I'd used Avada Kedavra! Expelliarmus saved me from Voldemort two years ago," Harry added defiantly. Lupin was reminding him of the sneering Hufflepuff Zacharias Smith, **

Said guy looked down sheepish.

**who had jeered at Harry for wanting to teach Dumbledore's Army how to Disarm.**

"What?" everyone asked turning to Dumbledore for answers.

Dumbledore merely said, "It is not my doing."

Everyone in the D.A looked around avoiding eyes.

Soon they went back to reading, their curiosity of the book getting to them.

**"Yes, Harry," said Lupin with painful restraint, **

"I'll bet he wanted to strangle you." Laughed two red haired boys.

"I want to strangle you!" came a frustrated mom.

**"and a great number of Death Eaters witnessed that happening! Forgive me, but it was a very unusual move then, under the imminent threat of death. Repeating it tonight in front of Death Eaters who either witnessed or heard about the first occasion was close to suicidal!"**

"Strong opinion."

**"So you think I should have killed Stan Shunpike?" said Harry angrily.**

"Well that's what they want to do to you." Stated Ron.

**"Of course not," said Lupin, "but the Death Eaters frankly, most people! would have expected you to attack back! Expelliarmus is a useful spell, Harry, but the Death Eaters seem to think it is your signature move, and I urge you not to let it become so!"**

Harry silently disagreed. He had faced Voldemort and Expelliarmus helped him excaped.

**Lupin was making Harry feel idiotic, and yet there was still a grain of defiance inside him.**

"Gryffindor."

**"I won't blast people out of my way just because they're there," said Harry, "That's Voldemort's job."**

"Go Harry!" all of Gryffindor yelled.

**Lupin's retort was lost: Finally succeeding in squeezing through the door, Hagrid staggered to a chair and sat down; it collapsed beneath him. Ignoring his mingled oaths and apologies, Harry addressed Lupin again.**

**"Will George be okay?"**

The Weasley's faces all had worried lines etched into their faces.

"You better" Fred threatened his brother.

"Hey. What about you." George started. "We don't even know if you are ok."

"I will." Fred said confidently.

**All Lupin's frustration with Harry seemed to drain away at the question.**

"I do care!" Lupin told Harry. "You make me sound so heartless.

Everyone laughed as Harry muttered a sorry and how it hadn't happened yet.

**"I think so, although there's no chance of replacing his ear, not when it's been cursed off"**

"Well their goes our best trick" Fred and George said sad.

**There was a scuffling from outside. Lupin dived for the back door; Harry leapt over Hagrid's legs and sprinted into the yard.**

"You're like superman" a muggleborn giggled.

**Two figures had appeared in the yard, **

"Everyone looked nervous all wondering who it was. Who was safe.

**and as Harry ran toward them he realized they were Hermione, **

Ron and Harry couldn't help the smile that was creeping up their face. They were happy that she was ok.

Hermione wanted to feel relieved, but she was so scared for the others.

**now returning to her normal appearance, and Kingsley, both clutching a bent coat hanger, Hermione flung herself into Harry's arms, but Kingsley showed no pleasure at the sight of any of them. Over Hermione's shoulder Harry saw him raise his wand and point it at Lupin's chest.**

"Ya'll mean business." Neville laughed shyly.

**"The last words Albus Dumbledore spoke to the pair of us!"**

Lupin and Kingsly shared a smile.

**"'Harry is the best hope we have. Trust him,'" said Lupin calmly.**

Harry looked at the Professor. It meant a lot to him that was what Dumbledore last told them.

**Kingsley turned his wand on Harry, but Lupin said, "It's him, I've checked!"**

"Rough!" Ginny sad.

**"All right, all right!" said Kingsley, stowing his wand back beneath his cloak, "But somebody betrayed us! They knew, they knew it was tonight!"**

"Yea. We know" Said Ron angrily.

**"So it seems," replied Lupin, "but apparently they did not realize that there would be seven Harrys."**

**"Small comfort!" snarled Kingsley. "Who else is back?"**

**"Only Harry, Hagrid, George, and me."**

**Hermione stifled a little moan behind her hand.**

Fred and George wolf whistled, while the Ron and Hermione blushed.

**"What happened to you?" Lupin asked Kingsley.**

**"Followed by five, injured two, might've killed one," Kingsley reeled off, "and we saw You-Know-Who as well, he joined the chase halfway through but vanished pretty quickly. Remus, he can"**

"Late News"

**"Fly," supplied Harry. "I saw him too, he came after Hagrid and me."**

**"So that's why he left, to follow you!" said Kingsley, "I couldn't understand why he'd vanished. But what made him change targets?"**

**"Harry behaved a little too kindly to Stan Shunpike," said Lupin.**

"You're still on about that", groaned Harry.

**"Stan?" repeated Hermione. "But I thought he was in Azkaban?"**

**Kingsley let out a mirthless laugh.**

**"Hermione, there's obviously been a mass breakout which the Ministry has hushed up. Travers's hood fell off when I cursed him, he's supposed to be inside too. But what happened to you, Remus? Where's George?"**

**"He lost an ear," said Lupin.**

"Real Blunt Remus." laughed Tonks.

Lupin smiled, but you could tell he was still worried about her.

**"lost an ?" repeated Hermione in a high voice.**

**"Snape's work," said Lupin.**

"What!" yelled the whole hall.

Snape must have been very good at hiding his emotions, because he didn't flinch once at all the death glares sent his way.

**"Snape?" shouted Harry. "You didn't say- "**

**"He lost his hood during the chase. Sectumsempra was always a specialty of Snape's. I wish I could say I'd paid him back in kind, but it was all I could do to keep George on the broom after he was injured, he was losing so much blood."**

Molly sent Lupin a grateful smile for helping her son.

**Silence fell between the four of them as they looked up at the sky. There was no sign of movement; the stars stared back, unblinking, indifferent, unobscured by flying friends. Where was Ron? Where were Fred and Mr. Weasley? Where were Bill, Fleur, Tonks, Mad-Eye, and Mundungus?**

The tension was horrible thick. People were really worried.

**"Harry, give us a hand!" called Hagrid hoarsely from the door, in which he was stuck again. Glad of something to do, Harry pulled him free, they headed through the empty kitchen and back into the sitting room, where Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were still tending to George. Mrs. Weasley had staunched his bleeding now, and by the lamplight Harry saw a clean gaping hole where George's ear had been.**

Everyone looked disturbed by that. George was even sub-cautiously rubbing his ear.

**"How is he?"**

**Mrs. Weasley looked around and said, "I can't make it grow back, not when it's been removed by Dark Magic. But it could've been so much worse... He's alive."**

"Thank God" Harry said.

**"Yeah," said Harry. "Thank God."**

"Not much changes, huh Harry?" laughed Lee Jordan, the twins friend.

"Ya." Harry said dryly, while the hall laughed. "Haha"

**"Did I hear someone else in the yard?" Ginny asked.**

**"Hermione and Kingsley," said Harry.**

**"Thank goodness," Ginny whispered. They looked at each other; Harry wanted to hug her, hold on to her; he did not even care much that Mrs. Weasley was there, **

Harry blushed just like Ginny.

He shrunk into his chair as a result from the glares her brothers were sending him.

**but before he could act on the impulse, there was a great crash from the kitchen.**

"Oh no. What is it this time." Molly fretted.

**"I'll prove who I am, Kingsley, after I've seen my son, now back off if you know what's good for you!"**

The Weasley kids plus Harry and Hermione looked pretty surprised, they had rarely ever seen Mr. Weasley act like that or yell.

**Harry had never heard Mr. Weasley shout like that before. He burst into the living room, his bald patch gleaming with sweat, his spectacles askew, Fred right behind him, both pale but uninjured.**

"Oh Good" cried Molly.

**"Arthur!" sobbed Mrs. Weasley. "Oh thank goodness!"**

**"How is he?"**

**Mr. Weasley dropped to his knees beside George. For the first time since Harry had known him, Fred seemed to be lost for words. He gaped over the back of the sofa at his twin's wound as if he could not believe what he was seeing.**

"Fred" groaned George. "I'll be ok."

Fred smiled and nodded his head.

**Perhaps roused by the sound of Fred and their father's arrival, George stirred.**

**"How do you feel, Georgie?" whispered Mrs. Weasley.**

"Georgie?" he muttered. "C'mon woman."

**George's fingers groped for the side of his head.**

**"Saintlike," he murmured.**

Fred understood almost immediately.

Shaking his head, he said "Pathetic."

**"What's wrong with him?" croaked Fred, looking terrified. "Is his mind affected?"**

"Really?", Ginny laughed at her brother. "Is his mind affected!"

"Shut it", grumbled Fred, glaring at his younger sister.

**"Saintlike," repeated George, opening his eyes and looking up at his brother. "You see... I'm holy. Holey, Fred, geddit?"**

Everyone began to laugh, realizing that he must be ok.

"Are you sure your mind isn't affected?" asked Fred smirking, "Cause that joke was pretty lame."

**Mrs. Weasley sobbed harder than ever. Color flooded Fred's pale face.**

**"Pathetic," he told George. "Pathetic! With the whole wide world of ear-related humor before you, you go for holey?"**

**"Ah well," said George, grinning at his tear-soaked mother. "You'll be able to tell us apart now, anyway, Mum."**

"Ruins everything" the twins muttered.

**He looked around.**

**"Hi, Harry you are Harry, right?"**

"Nope" Harry said popping the p.

"You're so funny" George said sarcastically.

**"Yeah, I am," said Harry, moving closer to the sofa.**

"Hypocrite" Hermione said.

Harry and Ron looked at her with an amused expression.

**"Well, at least we got you back okay," said George. "Why aren't Ron and Bill huddled round my sickbed?"**

Mrs. Weasley began to sob thinking about her sons.

**"They're not back yet, George," said Mrs. Weasley. George's grin faded. Harry glanced at Ginny and motioned to her to accompany him back outside. **

"You kids behave", joked Bill, laughing at their faces.

**As they walked through the kitchen she said in a low voice.**

**"Ron and Tonks should be back by now. They didn't have a long journey; Auntie Muriel's not that far from here."**

Mr. Weasley, trying to cheer up Mrs. Weasley, said, "Honey, you know how your Aunt Muriel is. She was probably fussing at them for being late or something little."

**Harry said nothing. He had been trying to keep fear at bay ever since reaching the Burrow, but now it enveloped him, seeming to crawl over his skin, throbbing in his chest, clogging his throat. As they walked down the back steps into the dark yard, Ginny took his hand.**

Lee Jordan wolf whistled again, as Ginny tried to hide her smile. She had had a crush on him for years, how she not be excited.

**Kingsley was striding backward and forward, glancing up at the sky every time he turned. Harry was reminded of Uncle Vernon pacing the living room a million years ago. Hagrid, Hermione, and Lupin stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing upward in silence. None of them looked around when Harry and Ginny joined their silent vigil.**

**The minutes stretched into what might as well have been years. The slightest breath of wind made them all jump and turn toward the whispering bush or tree in the hope that one of the missing Order members might leap unscathed from its leaves.**

Everyone was getting anxious. Where were they?

**And then a broom materialized directly above them and streaked toward the ground.**

**"It's them!" screamed Hermione.**

"Oh Thank God", Mrs. Weasley breathed.

Harry looked like a huge brick was lifted off of him.

**Tonks landed in a long skid that sent earth and pebbles everywhere.**

"Make a great entrance, cause landing normal won't work will it Dora?" George laughed using her nickname.

She glared at him.

**"Remus!" Tonks cried as she staggered off the broom into Lupin's arms. His face was set and white: He seemed unable to speak, Ron tripped dazedly toward Harry and Hermione.**

**"You're okay," he mumbled, before Hermione flew at him and hugged him tightly.**

"Awe." Luna said dreamily. "You make a great couple."

**"I thought- I thought"**

**"'M all right," said Ron, patting her on the back. "'M fine."**

**"Ron was great," said Tonks warmly, relinquishing her hold on Lupin. "Wonderful. Stunned one of the Death Eaters, straight to the head, and when you're aiming at a moving target from a flying broom"**

"You'd be a great auror too Ron" Mad- Eye told him.

Ron smiled embarrassed by the attention.

**"You did?" said Hermione, gazing up at Ron with her arms still around his neck.**

"Thanks Hermione" Ron said grumpily.

**"Always the tone of surprise," he said a little grumpily, breaking free. "Are we the last back?"**

That got the worried mood back real quick.

**"No," said Ginny, "we're still waiting for Bill and Fleur and Mad-Eye and Mundungus. I'm going to tell Mum and Dad you're okay, Ron"**

Molly smiled at her daughter. She would be glad to know Ron was ok.

**She ran back inside.**

**"So what kept you? What happened?" Lupin sounded almost angry at Tonks.**

The hall was looking at him. Why was he mad?

**"Bellatrix," said Tonks. "She wants me quite as much as she wants Harry, Remus, She tried very hard to kill me. I just wish I'd got her, I owe Bellatrix. **

"Why?" asked a 5th Year Ravenclaw.

Harry's jaw locked, "She killed Sirius" he said painfully.

Tonks went back to reading.

**But we definitely injured Rodolphus... Then we got to Ron's Auntie Muriel's and we missed our Portkey and she was fussing over us"**

"See" said Arthur soothingly, rubbing his wife's back.

**A muscle was jumping in Lupin's jaw. He nodded, but seemed unable to say anything else.**

**"So what happened to you lot?" Tonks asked, turning to Harry, Hermione, and Kingsley.**

**They recounted the stories of their own journeys, but all the time the continued absence of Bill, Fleur, Mad-Eye, and Mundungus seemed to lie upon them like a frost, its icy bite harder and harder to ignore.**

"Bill" Molly began to cry softly.

"I'm sure I'm ok" he assured her, while gripping Fleur's hand.

**"I'm going to have to get back to Downing Street, I should have been there an hour ago," said Kingsley finally, after a last sweeping gaze at the sky. "Let me know when they're back."**

**Lupin nodded. With a wave to the others, Kingsley walked away into the darkness toward the gate. Harry thought he heard the faintest pop as Kingsley Disapparated just beyond the Burrow's boundaries.**

**Mr. And Mrs. Weasley came racing down the back steps, Ginny behind them. Both parents hugged Ron before turning to Lupin and Tonks.**

**"Thank you," said Mrs. Weasley, "for our sons."**

"It was no problem Molly" Lupin and Tonks said at the same time.

They both looked at each other and blushed.

**"Don't be silly, Molly," said Tonks at once.**

Tonks nodded in agreement.

**"How's George?" asked Lupin.**

**"What's wrong with him?" piped up Ron.**

**"He's lost"**

**But the end of Mrs. Weasley's sentence was drowned in a general outcry. A thestral had just soared into sight and landed a few feet from them. Bill and Fleur slid from its back, windswept but unhurt.**

"Oh My boy, you're ok." Molly cried.

**"Bill! Thank God, thank God"**

**Mrs. Weasley ran forward, but the hug Bill bestowed upon her was perfunctory. Looking directly at his father, he said, "Mad-Eye's dead."**

It was very silent. Probably the most quiet it had been during the whole reading. Nobody dared to move, or speak, or exhale.

Finally Tonks broke the silence, crying into Remus shoulder. Nobody even made fun of them, they were all too sad.

"Mad- Eye—" Harry's voice broke.

"Enough of this weeping", Mad Eye said indicating Tonks. "Everyone's got to die sometime. At least I died fighting."

"But—this is all my fault—" Harry began.

"Stop it!" growled Mad- Eye.

Harry still looked ashamed, but merely nodded.

**Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Harry felt as though something inside him was falling, falling through the earth, leaving him forever.**

**Everyone looked depressed, Harry had lost so much already.**

**"We saw it," said Bill; Fleur nodded, tear tracks glittering on her cheeks in the light from the kitchen window. "It happened just after we broke out of the circle: Mad-Eye and Dung were close by us, they were heading north too. Voldemort, he can fly, went straight for them. Dung panicked, I heard him cry out, Mad-Eye tried to stop him, but he Disapparated. Voldemort's curse hit Mad-Eye full in the face, he fell backward off his broom **

Shouts were yelled from every side of the Hall.

"That little two- faced—"

"Ron Weasley"

**and there was nothing we could do, nothing, we had half a dozen of them on our own tail"**

**Bill's voice broke.**

"There was nothing you could have done. Don't worry." Remus told Bill.

**"Of course you couldn't have done anything," said Lupin.**

**They all stood looking at each other. Harry could not quite comprehend it. Mad-Eye dead; it could not be... Mad-Eye, so tough, so brave, the consummate survivor...**

"Stop flattering me boy" Mad Eye said barking out a laugh.

Dumbledore had to smile as he heard his friend laughing.

**At last it seemed to dawn on everyone, though nobody said it, that there was no point of waiting in the yard anymore, and in silence they followed Mr. And Mrs. Weasley back into the Burrow, and into the living room, where Fred and George were laughing together.**

"They don't know" Neville said sadly.

**"What's wrong?" said Fred, scanning their faces as they entered, "What's happened? Who's?"**

**"Mad-Eye," said Mr. Weasley, "Dead."**

**The twins' grins turned to grimaces of shock. Nobody seemed to know what to do. Tonks was crying silently into a handkerchief: She had been close to Mad-Eye, Harry knew, his favorite and his protégée at the Ministry of Magic. **

Tonks gave Mad Eye a watery smile, which for once he returned, his magical eye spinning.

**Hagrid, who had sat down on the floor in the corner where he had most space, was dabbing at his eyes with his tablecloth-sized handkerchief.**

**Bill walked over to the sideboard and pulled out a bottle of fire-whisky and some glasses.**

**"Here," he said, and with a wave of his wand, he sent twelve full glasses soaring through the room to each of them, holding the thirteenth aloft. "Mad-Eye."**

**"Mad-Eye," they all said, and drank.**

**"Mad-Eye," echoed Hagrid, a little late, with a hiccup. The firewhisky seared Harry's throat. It seemed to burn feeling back into him, dispelling the numbness and sense of unreality firing him with something that was like courage.**

"That's just the firewhisky, Harry"

**"So Mundungus disappeared?" said Lupin, who had drained his own glass in one.**

"Do we have to talk about it so bluntly" Tonks cried.

"Sorry" Lupin apologize.

**The atmosphere changed at once. Everybody looked tense, watching Lupin, both wanting him to go on, it seemed to Harry, and slightly afraid of what they might hear.**

**"I know what you're thinking," said Bill, "and I wondered that too, on the way back here, because they seemed to be expecting us, didn't they? But Mundungus can't have betrayed us. They didn't know there would be seven Harry's, that confused them the moment we appeared, and in case you've forgotten, it was Mundungus who suggested that little bit of skullduggery. Why wouldn't he have told them the essential point? I think Dung panicked, it's as simple as that. He didn't want to come in the first place, but Mad-Eye made him, and You-Know-Who went straight for them. It was enough to make anyone panic."**

"Still doesn't give him the right to disapparate." Ron said angrily.

**"You-Know-Who acted exactly as Mad-Eye expected him to," sniffed Tonks. "Mad-Eye said he'd expect the real Harry to be with the toughest, most skilled Aurors. He chased Mad-Eye first, and when Mundungus gave them away he switched to Kingsley... "**

**"Yes, and zat eez all very good," snapped Fleur, "but still eet does not explain 'ow zey know we were moving 'Arry tonight, does eet? Somebody must 'ave been careless. Somebody let slip ze date to an outsider. It is ze only explanation for zem knowing ze date but not ze 'ole plan."**

"Snape!"

**She glared around at them all, tear tracks still etched on her beautiful face, silently daring any of them to contradict her. Nobody did. The only sound to break the silence was that of Hagrid hiccupping from behind his handkerchief. Harry glanced at Hagrid, who had just risked his own life to save Harry's Hagrid, whom he loved, whom he trusted, who had once been tricked into giving Voldemort crucial information in exchange for a dragon's egg...**

"What!"

Hagrid blushed.

**"No," Harry said aloud, and they all looked at him, surprised: The firewhisky seemed to have amplified his voice. "I mean... if somebody made a mistake," Harry went on, "and let something slip, I know they didn't mean to do it. It's not their fault," he repeated, again a little louder than he would usually have spoken. "We've got to trust each other. I trust all of you, I don't think anyone in this room would ever sell me to Voldemort."**

"Well said Harry." Dumbledore stated.

Harry smiled small.

**More silence followed his words. They were all looking at him; Harry felt a little hot again, and drank some more firewhisky for something to do. As he drank, he thought of Mad-Eye. Mad-Eye had always been scathing about Dumbledore's willingness to trust people.**

Mad Eye shook his head. Their willingness to trust people was going to kill them. Well it had already Dumbledore.

**"Well said, Harry," said Fred unexpectedly.**

**"Year, 'ear, 'ear," said George, with half a glance at Fred, the corner of whose mouth twitched.**

"You're just on a roll huh?" laughed Dean.

**Lupin was wearing an odd expression as he looked at Harry. It was close to pitying.**

**"You think I'm a fool?" demanded Harry.**

**"No, I think you're like James," said Lupin, "who would have regarded it as the height of dishonor to mistrust his friends."**

Lupin nodded with himself.

**Harry knew what Lupin was getting at: that his father had been betrayed by his friend Peter Pettigrew. He felt irrationally angry. He wanted to argue, but Lupin had turned away from him, set down his glass upon a side table, and addressed Bill, "There's work to do. I can ask Kingsley whether"**

**"No," said Bill at once, "I'll do it, I'll come."**

**"Where are you going?" said Tonks and Fleur together.**

"Ooh worried wives, bloody annoying." Fred and George Weasley got harsh looks from all the wives in the room.

**"Mad-Eye's body," said Lupin. "We need to recover it."**

"Don't!" Growled Moody, loudly.

**"Can't it?" began Mrs. Weasley with an appealing look at Bill.**

**"Wait?" said Bill, "Not unless you'd rather the Death Eaters took it?"**

**Nobody spoke. Lupin and Bill said good bye and left.**

"Be careful" Tonks interrupted herself to whisper to him.

**The rest of them now dropped into chairs, all except for Harry, who remained standing. The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence.**

**"I've got to go too," said Harry.**

"I don't think so." Mrs. Weasley said in a loud commanding voice, as everyone looked shocked.

**Ten pairs of startled eyes looked at him.**

**"Don't be silly, Harry," said Mrs. Weasley, "What are you talking about?"**

**"I can't stay here."**

**He rubbed his forehead; it was prickling again, he had not hurt like this for more than a year.**

**"You're all in danger while I'm here. I don't want"**

"Harry. Why did we just go through all of this. For you." Ginny said.

**"But don't be so silly!" said Mrs. Weasley. "The whole point of tonight was to get you here safely, and thank goodness it worked. And Fleur's agreed to get married here rather than in France, we've arranged everything so that we can all stay together and look after you"**

"You say it like I'm a little kid, who needs watching" he said quietly, but angry.

**She did not understand; she was making him feel worse, not better.**

"Well as long as it makes you stay." Molly said.

**"If Voldemort finds out I'm here"**

"How would he?" asked Bill?

**"But why should he?" asked Mrs. Weasley.**

The two grinned at each other.

**"There are a dozen places you might be now, Harry," said Mr. Weasley. "He's got no way of knowing which safe house you're in."**

**"It's not me I'm worried for!" said Harry.**

"Of course." Hermione said sadly, "It never is"

**"We know that," said Mr. Weasley quietly, "but it would make our efforts tonight seem rather pointless if you left."**

**"Yer not goin' anywhere," growled Hagrid. "Blimey, Harry, after all we wen' through ter get you here?"**

**"Yeah, what about my bleeding ear?" said George, hoisting himself up on his cushions.**

"Guilt trip will not work" Ron stated wisely.

**"I know that"**

**"Mad-Eye wouldn't want"**

**"I KNOW!" Harry bellowed.**

"And now you've done it!"

**He felt beleaguered and blackmailed: Did they think he did not know what they had done for him, didn't they understand that it was for precisely that reason that he wanted to go now, before they had to suffer any more on his behalf? There was a long and awkward silence in which his scar continued to prickle and throb, and which was broken at last by Mrs. Weasley.**

"Brave. We all know where Harry's tempers can lead him." Fred said.

**"Where's Hedwig, Harry?" she said coaxingly. "We can put her up with Pidwidgeon and give her something to eat."**

"Molly." Groaned Arthur. This was going to piss him off even more.

Molly did look guilty. "I'm sorry Harry."

"It's ok Mrs. Weasley."

**His insides clenched like a fist. He could not tell her the truth. He drank the last of his firewhisky to avoid answering.**

**"Wait till it gets out yeh did it again, Harry," said Hagrid. "Escaped him, fought him off when he was right on top of yeh!"**

"Wasn't me."

**"It wasn't me," said Harry flatly. "It was my wand. My wand acted of its own accord."**

**After a few moments, Hermione said gently, "But that's impossible, Harry. You mean that you did magic without meaning to; you reacted instinctively."**

"Ah, the logical one", Ron said.

**"No," said Harry. "The bike was falling, I couldn't have told you where Voldemort was, but my wand spun in my hand and found him and shot a spell at him, and it wasn't even a spell I recognized. I've never made gold flames appear before."**

"Accidental magic?" asked a 4th year Slytherin.

"I don't think so" Dumbledore replied. He left it at that.

**"Often," said Mr. Weasley, "when you're in a pressured situation you can produce magic you never dreamed of. Small children often find, before they're trained"**

**"It wasn't like that," said Harry through gritted teeth. His scar was burning. He felt angry and frustrated; he hated the idea that they were all imagining him to have power to match Voldemort's.**

"So modest" Ginny smiled at him.

**No one said anything. He knew that they did not believe him. Now that he came to think of it, he had never heard of a wand performing magic on its own before.**

**His scar seared with pain, it was all he could do not to moan aloud. Muttering about fresh air, he set down his glass and left the room.**

"Poor Harry" a first year Gryffindor said sadly.

**As he crossed the yard, the great skeletal thestral looked up, rustled its enormous batlike wings, then resumed its grazing. Harry stopped at the gate into the garden, staring out at its overgrown plants, rubbing his pounding forehead and thinking of Dumbledore.**

**Dumbledore would have believed him, he knew it. Dumbledore would have known how and why Harry's wand had acted independently, because Dumbledore always had the answers; he had known about wands, had explained to Harry the strange connection that existed between his wand and Voldemort's... But Dumbledore, like Mad-Eye, like Sirius, like his parents, like his poor owl, all were gone where Harry could never talk to them again. He felt a burning in his throat that had nothing to do with firewhisky...**

Many people were crying openly. It was true. Sad, but true. Everyone who Harry had loved kept dying. Who was next? They all asked themselves that one question.

**And then, out of nowhere, the pain in his scar peaked. As he clutched his forehead and closed his eyes, a voice screamed inside his head.**

People were looking confused. They had never heard anything like this before.

**"You told me the problem would be solved by using another's wand!"**

**And into his mind burst the vision of an emaciated old man lying in rags upon a stone floor, screaming, a horrible drawn-out scream, a scream of unendurable agony...**

"Whats going on!", cried a little first year Hufflepuff.

**"No! No! I beg you, I beg you..."**

**"You lied to Lord Voldemort, Ollivander!"**

"Ollivander?" yelled A Ravenclaw. "Where is he? What is going on?"

**"I did not... I swear I did not..."**

**"You sought to help Potter, to help him escape me!"**

**"I swear I did not... I believed a different wand would work..."**

**"Explain, then, what happened. Lucius's wand is destroyed!"**

Ron laughed bitterly, "Deserves it."

**"I cannot understand... The connection... exists only . between your two wands..."**

"Connection?"

**"Lies!"**

**"Please... I beg you..."**

**And Harry saw the white hand raise its wand and felt Voldemort's surge of vicious anger, saw the frail old main on the floor writhe in agony.**

"Lord Voldemort (Flinch) shows no mercy. Remember that," he looked over to the Slytherin table briefly, "when you are given a choice, about whose side to choose."

**"Harry?"**

**It was over as quickly as it had come: Harry stood shaking in the darkness, clutching the gate into the garden, his heart racing, his scar still tingling. It was several moments before he realized that Ron and Hermione were at his side.**

"And always will be", Hermione smiled at him in a total sisterly way. Ron thumped him on the back.

**"Harry, come back in the house," Hermione whispered, "You aren't still thinking of leaving?"**

**"Yeah, you've got to stay, mate," said Ron, thumping Harry on the back.**

**"Are you all right?" Hermione asked, close enough now to look into Harry's face. "You look awful!"**

"And you get mad at me for lack of tact", Ron turned to Hermione.

**"Well," said Harry shakily, "I probably look better than Ollivander..."**

**When he had finished telling them what he had seen, Ron looked appalled, but Hermione downright terrified.**

**"But it was supposed to have stopped! Your scar, it wasn't supposed to do this anymore! You mustn't let that connection open up again. Dumbledore wanted you to close your mind!"**

"Then he should have got me a better teacher." Harry said annoyed.

"And you should have tried harder." She argues back.

Tonks decided to keep reading before a fight could break out.

**When he did not reply, she gripped his arm.**

**"Harry, he's taking over the Ministry and the newspapers and half the Wizarding world! Don't let him inside your head too!"**

"Done" Tonk's announced.

"Ok. One more chapter, then we will all go to bed, and continue reading in the morning." Dumbledore told everyone.

With that Ginny had the book float over and read out,** "The Ghoul in Pajamas" **

Ok, so longest chapter yet. Took me a while to finish, but it's done! Anyways please review! Tell me what you think. 

The Questions:

1. Out of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and Luna. Who all can see the thestral's?

2. Who is the Arithmancy professor at Hogwarts?

3. In the Goblet Of Fire, for the Twiwizard competition, whose name was called out first?


	8. Chapter 6 The Ghoul In Pajamas

Hey, so sorry it took so long! I had a lot of things go on, please don't un-follow this story because I am back and will be updating more frequently now. Please reiview my lovely reviewers. :P

**Dedicated To-**

**Question 1: **Padfoot-Moony-an-Prongs

**Question 2: **edboy4926

**Question 3: **GoldenPhoenix864 (next time just answer 1 question)

Thanks to everyone else who has read my story and reviewed!

**The shock of losing Mad-Eye hung over the house in the days that followed; **

"You need to get over me, and continue whatever you have to do." Mad- Eye barked.

"It's not that easy to forget about someone you cared for." Harry spoke softly.

Every person went quiet, looking at Harry with sadness written across his or her faces.

**Harry kept expecting to see him stumping in through the back door like the other Order members, who passed in and out to relay news. Harry felt that nothing but action would assuage his feelings of guilt and grief and that he ought to set out on his mission to find and destroy Horcruxes as soon as possible.**

"A Horcruxe?" asked Harry, "What's that?

"A Horcruxe is a piece of your soul hidden in an object significant or important to the maker. In creating a Horcruxe, you are tearing your soul apart, very painful. By doing this, you have made yourself, in reason, immortal. Unless of course, someone were to destroy all the Horcruxes, you would be very vulnerable." Dumbledore announced. **(A/N: Wrote this on the spot, so it may not be fully correct.)**

"Sir, you said Horcruxes?", a 5th year Ravenclaw realized.

"Yes, I did. Lord Voldemort (Flinch) has made 7."

There was a silence, in which everyone processed this new information.

"And you're going to go hunting for them." Said Mrs. Weasley loud. She turned to Dumbledore, "Why isn't someone else doing this."

He replied, "Harry is the only one educated enough to do so."

Molly huffed, as Ginny read on.

**"Well, you can't do anything about the, Ron mouthed the word "Horcruxes" till you're seventeen. You've still got the Trace on you. And we can plan here as well as anywhere, can't we? Or," he dropped his voice to a whisper, "d'you reckon you already know where the You-Know-Whats are?"**

**"No," Harry admitted.**

"You don't even know where they are" Molly said outraged.

**"I think Hermione's been doing a bit of research," said Ron. "She said she was saving it for when you got here."**

"Shocked you could wait that long." Teased Harry.

Hermione just gave him a sarcastic smile.

**They were sitting at the breakfast table; Mr. Weasley and Bill had just left for work. Mrs. Weasley had gone upstairs to wake Hermione and Ginny, while Fleur had drifted off to take a bath.**

Many boys looked dreamily at that. Bill just pulled Fleur closer to him.

**"The Trace'll break on the thirty-first," said Harry. "That means I only need to stay here four days. Then I can-"**

**"Five days," Ron corrected him firmly. "We've got to stay for the wedding. They'll kill us if we miss it."**

Mrs. Weasley wasn't sure she liked this girl yet, but if there was wedding they had better stay for it.

**Harry understood "they" to mean Fleur and Mrs. Weasley.**

**"It's one extra day," said Ron, when Harry looked mutinous.**

**"Don't they realize how important?"**

"Probably not, Mate."

**"'Course they don't," said Ron. "They haven't got a clue. And now you mention it, I wanted to talk to you about that."**

**Ron glanced toward the door into the hall to check that Mrs. Weasley was not returning yet, then leaned in closer to Harry.**

**"Mum's been trying to get it out of Hermione and me. What we're off to do. She'll try you next, so brace yourself. Dad and Lupin've both asked as well, **

"As we should!" Molly exclaimed.

**but when we said Dumbledore told you not to tell anyone except us, **

"Dumbledore!"

"You left them this…. Mission."

"He's not old enough"

Many people were yelling at once. Tonk's shut everyone up by continuing with the book.

**they dropped it. Not Mum, though. She's determined."**

**Ron's prediction came true within hours. **

Ron laughed as his friend groaned. "I should be a seer", he joked.

**Shortly before lunch, Mrs. Weasley detached Harry from the others by asking him to help identify a lone man's sock that she thought might have come out of his rucksack. Once she had him cornered in the tiny scullery off the kitchen, she started.**

The hall laughed at Harry's luck.

**"Ron and Hermione seem to think that the three of you are dropping out of Hogwarts," she began in a light, casual tone.**

Harry was depressed about that. He would have never of ever thought about dropping out, if you had asked him a year ago. But times had changed, some for the better and the worse.

**"Oh," said Harry. "Well, yeah. We are."**

"Real blunt", Ginny interrupted herself, smirking at him.

**The mangle turned of its own accord in a corner, wringing out what looked like one of Mr. Weasley's vests.**

**"May I ask why you are abandoning your education?" said Mrs. Weasley.**

"Exactly" the red- headed mom agreed.

**"Well, Dumbledore left me... stuff to do," mumbled Harry. "Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too."**

**"What sort of 'stuff'?"**

"Just give it up mom, it's not like—" but Ron trailed off under the glare of his mother.

**"I'm sorry, I can't-"**

**"Well, frankly, I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I'm sure Mr. And Mrs. Granger would agree!" said Mrs. Weasley. **

Harry groaned, so she was going to take this approach.

**Harry had been afraid of the "concerned parent" attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did so that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny's. This did not help.**

The whole hall cracked up.

Ginny tried to hide her smile.

**"Dumbledore didn't want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley. I'm sorry. Ron and Hermione don't have to come, it's their choice."**

**"I don't see that you have to go either!" she snapped, dropping all pretenses now. "You're barely of age, any of you! It's utter nonsense, if Dumbledore needed work doing, he had the whole Order at his command! Harry, you must have misunderstood him. Probably he was telling you something he wanted done, and you took it to mean that he wanted you"**

Dumbledore shook his head, unseen by everyone but the trio.

**"I didn't misunderstand," said Harry flatly. "It's got to be me."**

That's when Harry knew that it had to be him. Hadn't it always. He knew about the prophecy, he knew in the end it would be just him.

**He handed her back the single sock he was supposed to be identifying, which was patterned with golden bulrushes.**

"Puddlemere United."

**"And that's not mine. I don't support Puddlemere United."**

**"Oh, of course not," said Mrs. Weasley with a sudden and rather unnerving return to her casual tone. "I should have realized. Well, Harry, while we've still got you here, you won't mind helping with the preparations for Bill and Fleur's wedding, will you? There's still so much to do."**

The Weasleys laughed at how fast their mother changed her tone and subject.

**"No—I- of course not," said Harry, disconcerted by this sudden change of subject.**

More laughing.

**"Sweet of you," she replied, and she smiled as she left the scullery.**

"She's up to something." Fred informed Harry.

**From that moment on, Mrs. Weasley kept Harry, Ron and Hermione so busy with preparations for the wedding that they hardly had any time to think. The kindest explanation of this behavior would have been that Mrs. Weasley wanted to distract them all from thoughts of Mad-Eye and the terrors of their recent journey. After two days of nonstop cutlery cleaning, of color-matching favors, ribbons, and flowers, of de-gnoming the garden and helping Mrs. Weasley cook vast batches of canap, however, Harry started to suspect her of a different motive. All the jobs she handed out seemed to keep him, Ron, and Hermione away from one another; he had not had a chance to speak to the two of them alone since the first night, when he had told them about Voldemort torturing Ollivander.**

"There it is." George announced, as Mrs. Weasley shot him a look.

"Smart move, actually Molly." Tonk's agreed, nodding.

**"I think Mum thinks that if she can stop the three of you getting together and planning, she'll be able to delay you leaving," Ginny told Harry in an undertone, as they laid the table for dinner on the third night of his stay.**

"And how is that going to help?" Harry grumbled.

"Don't you think, Molly" Remus started, "if they're going anyways, it would be better for them to be planned than totally unprepared.

Molly just ignored him, sending a glance at her daughter, to tell her to continue.

**"And then what does she think's going to happen?" Harry muttered. "Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she's holding us here making vol-au-vents?"**

"Uh Oh" Ron said.

**He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny's face whiten.**

**"So it's true?" she said. "That's what you're trying to do?"**

**"I—not- I was joking," said Harry evasively.**

"You are a horrible liar." Ginny informed him, while smirking.

**They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny's expression. **

"Ya, probably worry." Ginny grumbled. Harry just gave her a small smile, that made her insides melt.

**Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since those stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. **

Ginny and Harry were not as red as a tomato, both looking anywhere but each other.

Ginny's older brothers (save Bill) were glaring at Harry, she was their baby sister after all.

Bill, on the other hand was smiling. He was old enough to realize how good they were together.

**He was sure she was remembering them too. Both of them jumped as the door opened, and Mr. Weasley, Kingsley, and Bill walked in.**

**They were often joined by other Order members for dinner now, because the Burrow had replaced number twelve, Grimmauld Place as the headquarters. Mr. Weasley had explained that after the death of Dumbledore, their Secret-Keeper, each of the people to whom Dumbledore had confided Grimmauld Place's location had become a Secret-Keeper in turn.**

"Not good. Since there are so many people, you can't expect it to stay much longer." Kingsley said.

**"And as there are around twenty of us, that greatly dilutes the power of the Fidelius Charm. Twenty times as many opportunities for the Death Eaters to get the secret out of somebody. We can't expect it to hold much longer."**

"Very similar."

**"But surely Snape will have told the Death Eaters the address by now?" asked Harry.**

Snape cursed on the inside. They still thought he worked for Voldemort.

**"Well, Mad-Eye set up a couple of curses against Snape in case he turns up there again. We hope they'll be strong enough both to keep him out and to bind his tongue if he tries to talk about the place, but we can't be sure. It would have been insane to keep using the place as headquarters now that its protection has become so shaky."**

**The kitchen was so crowded that evening it was difficult to maneuver knives and forks. Harry found himself crammed beside Ginny; the unsaid things that had just passed between them made him wish they had been separated by a few more people. He was trying so hard to avoid brushing her arm he could barely cut his chicken.**

"Awe" cooed Lavender. "That's so sweet."

Harry just rolled his eyes.

**"No news about Mad-Eye?" Harry asked Bill.**

**"Nothing," replied Bill.**

**They had not been able to hold a funeral for Moody, because Bill and Lupin had failed to recover his body. It had been difficult to know where he might have fallen, given the darkness and the confusion of the battle.**

Tonks sniffed slightly.

**"The Daily Prophet hasn't said a word about him dying or about finding the body," Bill went on. "But that doesn't mean much. It's keeping a lot quiet these days."**

"Of course. It has always kept things quiet." Hermione said roughly.

**"And they still haven't called a hearing about all the underage magic I used escaping the Death Eaters?" Harry called across the table to Mr. Weasley, who shook his head.**

**"Because they know I had no choice or because they don't want me to tell the world Voldemort attacked me?"**

"The latter." Bill stated.

**"The latter, I think. Scrimgeour doesn't want to admit that You-Know-Who is as powerful as he is, nor that Azkaban's seen a mass breakout."**

"Which is entirely stupid" Ron said loudly.

**"Yeah, why tell the public the truth?" said Harry, clenching his knife so tightly that the faint scars on the back of his right hand stood out, white against his skin: I must not tell lies.**

All those who had got one, looked at their scarred hands.

"Wait is that from a—"

Harry quickly said, "Keep reading."

**"Isn't anyone at the Ministry prepared to stand up to him?" asked Ron angrily.**

**"Of course, Ron, but people are terrified," Mr. Weasley replied, "terrified that they will be next to disappear, their children the next to be attacked! There are nasty rumors going around; I for one don't believe the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts resigned. She hasn't been seen for weeks now. Meanwhile Scrimgeour remains shut up in his office all day; I just hope he's working on a plan."**

"Doubt it." Ron said.

Many nodded, not liking Scrimgeour very much."

**There was a pause in which Mrs. Weasley magicked the empty plates onto the work surface and served apple tart.**

**"We must decide 'ow you will be disguised, 'Arry," said Fleur, once everyone had pudding. **

"What?" asked Ron.

"Wedding, I'll be guessing." Kingsley said giving his opinion.

"It's hard to imagine a wedding going on at a time like this." Harry sighed.

Remus let a shadow of a smile flicker across his face. "Exactly what I thought when your parents did the same thing." Harry smiled.

"But that's why everyone's doing it right, because with the war going on, none of us know whether we might live another day to see the ones we love. So we all must take risks and cherish those times we do have together." Neville spoke wisely.

Dumbledore had tears in his eyes, but they were sparkling. He was just so proud of how far his students had come, and all the valuable lessons they were learning along the way.

**"For ze wedding," she added, when he looked confused. **

"Ah, and the guy was right" Ron smirked at the big auror.

**"Of course, none of our guests are Death Eaters, but we cannot guarantee zat zey will not let something slip after zey 'ave 'ad champagne."**

**From this, Harry gathered that she still suspected Hagrid.**

Harry could feel himself mad, Hagrid would never ever do such a thing.

"Sorry again" Fleur said solemnly.

**"Yes, good point," said Mrs. Weasley from the top of the table where she sat, spectacles perched on the end of her nose, scanning an immense list of jobs that she had scribbled on a very long piece of parchment. "Now, Ron, have you cleaned out your room yet?"**

**"Why?" exclaimed Ron, slamming his spoon down and glaring at his mother. "Why does my room have to be cleaned out? Harry and I are fine with it the way it is!"**

"Your gonna get it Ron", laughed the eldest brother.

**"We are holding your brother's wedding here in a few days' time, young man"**

"It's won't be in my room though, mum" Ron grumbled.

**"And are they getting married in my bedroom?" asked Ron furiously. "No! So why in the name of Merlin's saggy left"**

"Wow!" the twins looked at their younger brother in shock.

"Who knew he had it in him" George told his brother.

"Wonder how you get out of this one." Laughed Ginny.

**"Don't talk to your mother like that," said Mr. Weasley firmly. "And do as you're told."**

**Ron scowled at both his parents, then picked up his spoon and attacked the last few mouthfuls of his apple tart.**

**"I can help, some of it's my mess." Harry told Ron, but Mrs. Weasley cut across him.**

Everyone laughed, as Mrs. Weasley blushed.

"You're just gonna do everything in your power to keep them apart huh?" Arthur teased his wife.

**"No, Harry, dear, I'd much rather you helped Arthur much out the chickens, and Hermione, I'd be ever so grateful if you'd change the sheets for Monsieur and Madame Delacour; you know they're arriving at eleven tomorrow morning."**

**But as it turned out, there was very little to do for the chickens. "There's no need to, er, mention it to Molly," Mr. Weasley told Harry, blocking his access to the coop, "but, er, Ted Tonks sent me most of what was left of Sirius's bike and, er, I'm hiding- that's to say, keeping it in here. Fantastic stuff: There's an exhaust gaskin, as I believe it's called, the most magnificent battery, and it'll be a great opportunity to find out how brakes work. I'm going to try and put it all back together again when Molly's not- I mean, when I've got time."**

"Nice dad" Ron high fived his dad, much to the amusement of everyone in the room.

Mrs. Weasley was glaring at her husband. "Arthur" she began.

"Now sweetie, since this hasn't happen, I believe we should blame anyone."

**When they returned to the house, Mrs. Weasley was nowhere to be seen, so Harry slipped upstairs to Ron's attic bedroom.**

Molly looked furious at her self.

**"I'm doing it, I'm doing! Oh, it's you," said Ron in relief, as Harry entered the room. Ron lay back down on the bed, which he had evidently just vacated. The room was just as messy as it had been all week; the only chance was that Hermione was now sitting in the far corner, **

"Wonder how she got away."

**her fluffy ginger cat, Crookshanks, at her feet, sorting books, some of which Harry recognized as his own, into two enormous piles.**

The trio shared a smile, at least now they would be able to start planning.

**"Hi, Harry," she said, as he sat down on his camp bed.**

**"And how did you manage to get away?"**

**"Oh, Ron's mum forgot that she asked Ginny and me to change the sheets yesterday," said Hermione. She threw Numerology and Grammatica onto one pile and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts onto the other.**

**"We were just talking about Mad-Eye," Ron told Harry. "I reckon he might have survived."**

"Use your brain, Weasley!" Mad- Eye shouted at Ron, startling him.

**"But Bill saw him hit by the Killing Curse," said Harry.**

Many winced.

**"Yeah, but Bill was under attack too," said Ron. "How can he be sure what he saw?"**

Bill gave his brother a look, like really?

**"Even if the Killing Curse missed, Mad-Eye still fell about a thousand feet," said Hermione, now weight Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland in her hand.**

**"He could have used a Shield Charm"**

**"Fleur said his wand was blasted out of his hand," said Harry.**

"It sounds like you want him to be dead." Ron said frustrated.

Before Hermione and Harry could argue back, which they looked about ready to do, Ginny read on.

**"Well, all right, if you want him to be dead," said Ron grumpily, punching his pillow into a more comfortable shape.**

**"Of course we don't want him to be dead!" said Hermione, looking shocked. "It's dreadful that he's dead! But we're being realistic!"**

"At least someone's using their brain." Alastor muttered.

**For the first time, Harry imagined Mad-Eye's body, broken as Dumbledore's had been, yet with that one eye still whizzing in its socket. He felt a stab of revulsion mixed with a bizarre desire to laugh.**

Hermione looked at him, "To laugh?" she said faintly.

**"The Death Eaters probably tidied up after themselves, that's why no one's found him," said Ron wisely.**

**"Yeah," said Harry. "Like Barty Crouch, turned into a bone and buried in Hagrid's front garden. They probably transfigured Moody and stuffed him-"**

"Harry!" Ginny and Hermione yelled looking at him.

The tough, auror began to cry at the reminder of her mentor. Remus grabbed her and squeezed it.

**"Don't!" squealed Hermione. Startled, Harry looked over just in time to see her burst into tears over her copy of Spellman's Syllabary.**

"Oh Hermione, I'm so sorry." Harry said giving her a hug.

**"Oh no," said Harry, struggling to get up from the old camp bed. "Hermione, I wasn't trying to upset-"**

**But with a great creaking of rusty bedsprings, Ron bounded off the bed and got there first. **

"Oh of course." Harry teased his friend, who just glared at him.

**One arm around Hermione, he fished in his jeans pocket and withdrew a revolting-looking handkerchief that he had used to clean out the oven earlier. Hastily pulling out his wand, he pointed it at the rag and said, "Tergeo."**

"Thank you Ronald." Laughed Hermione.

**The wand siphoned off most of the grease. **

"Most!" Lavender Brown squealed, grossed out.

**Looking rather pleased with himself, Ron handed the slightly smoking handkerchief to Hermione.**

"And smoking_"

"Oh shut it!"

**"Oh... thanks, Ron... I'm sorry..." She blew her nose and hiccupped. "It's just so awf-ful, isn't it? R-right after Dumbledore... I j-just n-never imagined Mad-Eye dying, somehow, he seemed so tough!"**

"That just shows that even the best of us aren't invincible." Dumbledore told his students.

**"Yeah, I know," said Ron, giving her a squeeze. "But you know what he'd say to us if he was here?"**

**"'C-constant vigilance,'" said Hermione, mopping her eyes.**

Mad- Eye felt proud that at least he had worn off on the kids, well more like young adults now.

**"That's right," said Ron, nodding. "He'd tell us to learn from what happened to him. And what I've learned is not to trust that cowardly little squit, Mundungus."**

"True!" Ron agreed, hating that filthy Mundungus.

**Hermione gave a shaky laugh and leaned forward to pick up two more books. A second later, Ron had snatched his arm back from around her shoulders; she had dropped The Monster of Monsters on his foot. The book had broken free from its restraining belt and snapped viciously at Ron's ankle.**

"Ouch" Ron mumbled, remembering those torturing books.

**"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Hermione cried as Harry wrenched the book from Ron's leg and retied it shut.**

**"What are you doing with all those books anyway?" Ron asked, limping back to his bed.**

"I'm so sorry Ron!" Hermione told him.

**"Just trying to decide which ones to take with us," said Hermione, "When we're looking for the Horcruxes."**

"Hermione" Ron and Harry groaned along with, well everyone.

**"Oh, of course," said Ron, clapping a hand to his forehead. "I forgot we'll be hunting down Voldemort in a mobile library."**

The whole hall cracked up, while Hermione slapped Ron on the arm. Hard.

The twins burst into applause. "Were finally rubbing off on you!" they fake cried.

"Shut up" grumbled Ron, still rubbing his arm where Mione slapped him.

**"Ha ha," said Hermione, looking down at Spellman's Syllabary. "I wonder... will we need to translate runes? It's possible... I think we'd better take it, to be safe."**

**She dropped the syllabary onto the larger of the two piles and picked up Hogwarts, A History.**

"Love that book." Hermione said**.**

**"Listen," said Harry.**

**He had sat up straight. Ron and Hermione looked at him with similar mixtures of resignation and defiance.**

**"I know you said after Dumbledore's funeral that you wanted to come with me," Harry began.**

Everyone rolled their eyes, honestly.

**"Here he goes," Ron said to Hermione, rolling his eyes.**

**"As we knew he would," she sighed, turning back to the books. "You know, I think I will take Hogwarts, A History. Even if we're not going back there, I don't think I'd feel right if I didn't have it with-"**

**"Listen!" said Harry again.**

"Harry!"

**"No, Harry, you listen," said Hermione. "We're coming with you. That was decided months ago- years, really."**

**"But-"**

"Don't Argue" supplied Neville.

**"Shut up," Ron advised him.**

Laughter rang through the hall.

**"Are you sure you've thought this through?" Harry persisted.**

**"Let's see," said Hermione, slamming Travels with Trolls onto the discarded pile with a rather fierce look. **

"Oh great. Now you've got her mad."

**"I've been packing for days, so we're ready to leave at a moment's notice, which for your information has included doing some pretty difficult magic, not to mention smuggling Mad-Eye's whole stock of Polyjuice Potion right under Ron's mum's nose."**

Hermione turned bright red and looked down, mumbling sorry.

Tonks whistled, "That's really good. Being able to hide something from Molly.

**"I've also modified my parents' memories so that they're convinced they're really called Wendell and Monica Wilkins, and that their life's ambition is to move to Australia, which they have now done. That's to make it more difficult for Voldemort to track them down and interrogate them about me or you, because unfortunately, I've told them quite a bit about you."**

Ron tried not to show his disappointment. He wondered if Hermione ever told her parents about him.

Ron was pulled out of his thoughts by his sisters reading.

**"Assuming I survive our hunt for the Horcruxes, I'll find Mum and Dad and lift the enchantment. If I don't, well, I think I've cast a good enough charm to keep them safe and happy. Wendell and Monica Wilkins don't know that they've got a daughter, you see."**

Everyone stared at the girl amazed. Hermione could not fight the tears which had built up in her eyes.

She leaned into Ron, not really caring who saw, just wantingcomfort. Harry reached over and squeezed her hand, showing he was there.

**Hermione's eyes were swimming with tears again. Ron got back off the bed, put his arm around her once more, and frow mned at Harry as though reproaching him for lack of tact. Harry could not think of anything to say, not least because it was highly unusual for Ron to be teaching anyone else tact.**

"Hey!" Ron yelled playfully shoving his friend off the bench.

Harry got back up rubbing his side, which he fell on. "Ron! You know it's true."

Ron turned to Hermione, "Is it?"

She laughed, "You, Ronald, have absolutely No tact."

Ron grumbled about friends being gits.

**"I- Hermione, I'm sorry- I didn't-"**

**"Didn't realize that Ron and I know perfectly well what might happen if we come with you? Well, we do. Ron, show Harry what you've done."**

"Oh god." All the teachers thought.

**"Nah, he's just eaten," said Ron.**

"So it must be really gross!" Fred said like a happy puppy.

**"Go on, he needs to know!"**

"Someone's persistent."

**"Oh, all right. Harry, come here."**

**For the second time Ron withdrew his arm from around Hermione and stumped over to the door.**

**"C'mon."**

**"Why?" Harry asked, following Ron out of the room onto the tiny landing.**

The Weasley's blushed, but no one noticed.

**"Descendo," muttered Ron, pointing his wand at the low ceiling. A hatch opened right over their heads and a ladder slid down to their feet. A horrible, half-sucking, half-moaning sound came out of the square hole, along with an unpleasant smell like open drains.**

"Your ghoul is up there, right?"

Bill nodded, answering Harry's question.

**"That's your ghoul, isn't it?" asked Harry, who had never actually met the creature that sometimes disrupted the nightly silence.**

**"Yeah, it is," said Ron, climbing the ladder. "Come and have a look at him."**

Fred and George clapped, "So you've done something to the ghoul." George spoke excitedly, while Molly looked disapproving.

**Harry followed Ron up the few short steps into the tiny attic space. His head and shoulders were in the room before he caught sight of the creature curled up a few feet from him, fast asleep in the gloom with its large mouth wide open.**

**"But it... it looks... do ghouls normally wear pajamas?"**

The twins cracked up, while Bill shook his head fondly at his little brother.

**"No," said Ron. "Nor have they usually got red hair or that number of pustules."**

"Oh My" Mrs. McGonagall muttered.

**Harry contemplated the thing, slightly revolted. It was human in shape and size, and was wearing what, now that Harry's eyes became used to the darkness, was clearly an old pair of Ron's pajamas. He was also sure that ghouls were generally rather slimy and bald, rather than distinctly hairy and covered in angry purple blisters.**

**"He's me, see?" said Ron.**

Every single person burst out laughing, as Ron smiled, while blushing.

**"No," said Harry. "I don't."**

**"I'll explain it back in my room, the smell's getting to me," said Ron.**

"Do you never clean or something." Draco smirked.

All of Gryffindor glared at the Malfoy boy.

Mr. and Mrs. Wesley felt embarrassed.

**They climbed back down the ladder, which Ron returned to the ceiling, and rejoined Hermione, who was still sorting books.**

**"Once we've left, the ghoul's going to come and live down here in my room," said Ron. "I think he's really looking forward to it, well, it's hard to tell, because all he can do is moan and drool, but he nods a lot when you mention it. Anyway, he's going to be me with spattergroit. Good, eh?"**

"That's actually a brilliant idea Ronald!" Hermione praised.

**Harry merely looked his confusion.**

All the muggle-borns looked the same way.

**"It is!" said Ron, clearly frustrated that Harry had not grasped the brilliance of the plan. "Look, when we three don't turn up at Hogwarts again, everyone's going to think Hermione and I must be with you, right? Which means the Death Eaters will go straight for our families to see if they've got information on where you are."**

**"But hopefully it'll look like I've gone away with Mum and Dad; a lot of Muggle-borns are talking about going into hiding at the moment," said Hermione.**

"Ya'll really did plan this through." Remus said, clearly impressed.

**"We can't hide my whole family, it'll look too fishy and they can't all leave their jobs," said Ron. "So we're going to put out the story that I'm seriously ill with spattergroit, which is why I can't go back to school. If anyone comes calling to investigate, Mum or Dad can show them the ghoul in my bed, covered in pustules. Spattergroit's really contagious, so they're not going to want to go near him. It won't matter that he can't say anything, either, because apparently you can't once the fungus has spread to your uvula."**

"Wow! You could actually pull this off" Ginny marveled.

**"And your mum and dad are in on this plan?" asked Harry.**

**"Dad is. He helped Fred and George transform the ghoul. Mum... well, you've seen what she's like. She won't accept we're going till we're gone."**

Molly glared at her husband, who smiled weakly back at her.

George and Fred were cracking up behind there mothers back.

**There was silence in the room, broken only by gentle thuds as Hermione continued to throw books onto one pile or the other. Ron sat watching her, and Harry looked from one to the other, unable to say anything. The measure they had taken to protect their families made him realize, more than anything else could have done, that they really were going to come with him and that they knew exactly how dangerous that would be. He wanted to tell them what that meant to him, but he simply could not find words important enough.**

"We understand " Hermione whispered softly. Harry looked at his to friends and felt deep affection for both of them, and how they had always stood with him.

**Through the silence came the muffled sounds of Mrs. Weasley shouting from four floors below.**

**"Ginny's probably left a speck of dust on a poxy napkin ring," said Ron. **

"Oh ya, blame it on me!" Ginny mumbled. Mock glaring at her brother.

**"I dunno why the Delacours have got to come two days before the wedding."**

All the girls and woman rolled their eyes. Boys! Don't they know anything?

**"Fleur's sister's a bridesmaid, she needs to be here for the rehearsal, and she's too young to come on her own," said Hermione, as she pored indecisively over Break with a Banshee.**

**"Well, guests aren't going to help Mum's stress levels," said Ron.**

**"What we really need to decide," said Hermione, tossing Defensive Magical Theory into the bin without a second glance **

"Not really much need for that." Ron muttered.

**and picking up An Appraisal of Magical Education in Europe, "is where we're going after we leave here. I know you said you wanted to go to Godric's Hollow first, Harry, **

"That's maybe dangerous though" Ginny said with sympathy.

**and I understand why, but... well... shouldn't we make the Horcruxes our priority?"**

"It seems like you guys don't have any idea where any of them are, though, unless were all missing something.

**"If we knew where any of the Horcruxes were, I'd agree with you," said Harry, who did not believe that Hermione really understood his desire to return to Godric's Hollow. His parents' graves were only part of the attraction: He had a strong, though inexplicable, feeling that the place held answers for him. Perhaps it was simply because it was there that he had survived Voldemort's Killing Curse; now that he was facing the challenge of repeating the feat, Harry was drawn to the place where it had happened, wanting to understand.**

Everyone glanced at him sympathetically.

"We do understand." Ron told Harry sincerely.

**"Don't you think there's a possibility that Voldemort's keeping a watch on Godric's Hollow?" Hermione asked.**

"I would guess." Kingsley spoke up. "He would probably think that you would go back, I estimate that he has people guarding it, in case you were to show up."

"Well let's hope my future self starts thinking more reasonably." Harry mumbled.

**"He might expect you to go back and visit your parents' graves once you're free to go wherever you like?"**

"Smart Girl." Moody agreed.

**This had not occurred to Harry. While he struggled to find a counterargument, Ron spoke up, evidently following his own train of thought.**

Everyone cracked a smile.

**"This R.A.B. person," he said. "You know, the one who stole the real locket?"**

**Hermione nodded.**

**"He said in his note he was going to destroy it, didn't he?"**

"That could mean you guys have 1 less to worry about." Neville said, starting to realize what a great help that would be.

"But knowing Harry, with his bad luck, the odds wont be in his favor."

"Nice to know how much you believe in me" Harry said to Ron, glaring at him playfully.

**Harry dragged his rucksack toward him and pulled out the fake Horcrux in which R.A.B.'s note was still folded.**

**"'I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can.'" Harry read out.**

**"Well, what if he did finish it off?" said Ron.**

"It could be a girl" Luna said dreamily.

**"Or she." Interposed Hermione.**

"Hermione thinks like Luna" Harry laughed.

**"Whichever," said Ron. "it'd be one less for us to do!"**

**"Yes, but we're still going to have to try and trace the real locket, aren't we?" said Hermione, "to find out whether or not it's destroyed."**

"How do you destroy it?" Dean asked, still confused.

Everyone shook his or her head, just as confused.

**"And once we get hold of it, how do you destroy a Horcrux?" asked Ron.**

**"Well," said Hermione, "I've been researching that."**

"Haha of course, but how?" asked Ron curiously.

"Oh I don't know, why don't we read?" she asked like she was talking to a 5 year old.

**"How?" asked Harry. "I didn't think there were any books on Horcruxes in the library?"**

"Exactly!"

"Ron."

"Yes?"

"Shut-up."

"….

"I still don't…

"UGHHH!"

**"There weren't," said Hermione, who had turned pink. "Dumbledore removed them all, but he- he didn't destroy them."**

"Oh my." George said laughing.

"What has Ms. Goody-two-shoes gotten herself into?" asked Fred like a gossiping girl.

Hermione glared at them. And when no one was looking, she shot a well- aimed hex at the two teenagers.

**Ron sat up straight, wide-eyed.**

**"How in the name of Merlin's pants have you managed to get your hands on those Horcrux books?"**

**"It- it wasn't stealing!" said Hermione, looking from Harry to Ron with a kind of desperation. "They were still library books, even if Dumbledore had taken them off the shelves. Anyway, if he really didn't want anyone to get at them, I'm sure he would have made it much harder to-"**

Dumbledore's eyes shone with amusement.

**"Get to the point!" said Ron.**

**"Well... it was easy," said Hermione in a small voice. "I just did a Summoning Charm. You know, Accio. And they zoomed out of Dumbledore's study window right into the girls' dormitory."**

Ron and Harry both looked at Hermione surprised, but admiring.

"Sorry" Hermione said in a small voice, speaking to Dumbledore.

"My dear, I believe if I didn't intend for you to find them, I would have hidden them better."

**"But when did you do this?" Harry asked, regarding Hermione with a mixture of admiration and incredulity.**

**"Just after his- Dumbledore's funeral," said Hermione **

Everyone winced.

**in an even smaller voice. "Right after we agreed we'd leave school and go and look for the Horcruxes. When I went back upstairs to get my things it- it just occurred to me that the more we knew about them, the better it would be... and I was alone in there... so I tried... and it worked. They flew straight in through the open window and I- I packed them."**

Mad-eye had to admit he was very curious to see how this whole 'hunt' was going to play out, since they all seemed to be good at figuring things out.

**She swallowed and then said imploringly, "I can't believe Dumbledore would have been angry, it's not as though we're going to use the information to make a Horcrux, is it?"**

Everyone laughed, "They aren't complaining" Neville told her.

**"Can you hear us complaining?" said Ron. "Where are these books anyway?"**

**Hermione rummaged for a moment and then extracted from the pile a large volume, bound in faded black leather. She looked a little nauseated and held it as gingerly as if it were something recently dead.**

"The stuff in there is probably a lot worse."

**"This is the one that gives explicit instructions on how to make a Horcrux. Secrets of the Darkest Art, it's a horrible book, really awful, full of evil magic. I wonder when Dumbledore removed it from the library... if he didn't do it until he was headmaster, I bet Voldemort got all the instruction he needed from here."**

"You are probably right, Ms. Granger" Dumbledore told the said girl.

"She's always right, isn't she" stated Seamus, Hermione blushed.

**"Why did he have to ask Slughorn **

"Who's Slughorn?" asked Harry.

"An old professor" was all Dumbledore said.

**how to make a Horcrux, then, if he'd already read that?" asked Ron.**

**"He only approached Slughorn to find out what would happen if you split your soul into seven," said Harry. **

"Seven" Ginny said faintly, still shocked about that.

**"Dumbledore was sure Riddle already knew how to make a Horcrux by the time he asked Slughorn about them. I think you're right, Hermione, **

"How many times are we gonna hear that line" laughed Ron, as Hermione shoved him.

**that could easily have been where he got the information."**

**"And the more I've read about them," said Hermione, "the more horrible they seem, and the less I can believe that he actually made six. It warns in this book how unstable you make the rest of your soul by ripping it, and that's just by making one Horcrux!"**

"Wow. I can't believe that. He really is crazy." George said.

**Harry remembered what Dumbledore had said about Voldemort moving beyond "usual evil."**

**"Isn't there any way of putting yourself back together?" Ron asked.**

"I believe so" Dumbledore said, having read those books himself. "But I couldn't see Voldemort

(Flinch)

doing that."

**"Yes," said Hermione with a hollow smile, "but it would be excruciatingly painful."**

**"Why? How do you do it?" asked Harry.**

**"Remorse," said Hermione. "You've got to really feel what you've done. There's a footnote. Apparently the pain of it can destroy you. I can't see Voldemort attempting it somehow, can you?"**

"No!" Everyone answered immediately.

**"No," said Ron, before Harry could answer. "So does it say how to destroy Horcruxes in that book?"**

**"Yes," said Hermione, now turning the fragile pages as if examining rotting entrails, "because it warns Dark wizards how strong they have to make the enchantments on them. From all that I've read, what Harry did to Riddle's diary was one of the few really foolproof ways of destroying a Horcrux."**

**"What, stabbing it with a basilisk fang?" asked Harry.**

Everyone started to get interested, wanting to hear about the Trio's adventures.

**"Oh well, lucky we've got such a large supply of basilisk fangs, then," said Ron. "I was wondering what we were going to do with them."**

Everyone laughed, "Seriously Ronnikins, when did you get funny!" Fred and George said incredulously.

Ron stuck his tongue out at his brothers.

**"It doesn't have to be a basilisk fang," said Hermione patiently. "It has to be something so destructive that the Horcrux can't repair itself. Basilisk venom only has one antidote, and it's incredibly rare."**

"**Phoenix tears," said Harry, nodding.**

**"Exactly," said Hermione. "Our problem is that there are very few substances as destructive as basilisk venom, and they're all dangerous to carry around with you. **

"Why can't you just smash or step on it?" said a Slytherin not, understanding anything.

**That's a problem we're going to have to solve, though, because ripping, smashing, or crushing a Horcrux won't do the trick. You've got to put it beyond magical repair."**

"That's why."

**"But even if we wreck the thing it lives in," said Ron, "why can't the bit of soul in it just go and live in something else?"**

**"Because a Horcrux is the complete opposite of a human being."**

Now everyone was even more confused, none of this was making sense.

**Seeing that Harry and Ron looked thoroughly confused, Hermione hurried on. "Look, if I picked up a sword right now, Ron, and ran you through with it, I wouldn't damage your soul at all."**

Everyone in the hall was laughing so hard. "That's not at all comforting Hermione." Grumbled Ron.

**"Which would be a real comfort to me, I'm sure," said Ron. Harry laughed.**

"Thanks mate."

**"It should be, actually! But my point is that whatever happens to your body, your soul will survive, untouched," said Hermione. "But it's the other way round with a Horcrux. The fragment of soul inside it depends on its container, its enchanted body, for survival. It can't exist without it."**

**"That diary sort of died when I stabbed it," said Harry, remembering ink pouring like blood from the punctured pages, and the screams of the piece of Voldemort's soul as it vanished.**

Harry and Ginny shivered remembering the diary.

**"And once the diary was properly destroyed, the bit of soul trapped in it could no longer exist. Ginny tried to get rid of the diary before you did, flushing it away, but obviously it came back good as new."**

**"Hang on," said Ron, frowning. "The bit of soul in that diary was possessing Ginny, wasn't it? How does that work, then?"**

"You just had to bring that up!" Ginny glared at her brother harshly.

**"While the magical container is still intact, the bit of soul inside it can flit in and out of someone if they get too close to the object. I don't mean holding it for too long, it's nothing to do with touching it," she added before Ron could speak. "I mean close emotionally. Ginny poured her heart out into that diary, she made herself incredibly vulnerable. You're in trouble if you get too fond of or dependent on the Horcrux."**

Ginny winced, the memory of her first year coming back to her.

**"I wonder how Dumbledore destroyed the ring?" said Harry. "Why didn't I ask him? I never really..."**

**His voice trailed away: He was thinking of all the things he should have asked Dumbledore, and of how, since the headmaster had died, it seemed to Harry that he had wasted so many opportunities when Dumbledore had been alive, to find out more... to find out everything...**

Dumbledore couldn't help feeling a little guilty.

Harry was thinking about that, maybe he should take more time to learn more about the Headmaster.

**The silence was shattered as the bedroom door flew open with a wall-shaking crash. Hermione shrieked and dropped Secrets of the Darkest Art; Crookshanks streaked under the bed, hissing indignantly; Ron jumped off the bed, skidded on a discarded Chocolate Frog wrapper, and smacked his head on the opposite wall; and Harry instinctively dived for his wand **

Everyone was a little worried about who it was, it could be a…. nah.

**before realizing that he was looking up at Mrs. Weasley, whose hair was disheveled and whose face was contorted with rage.**

"Oh god. That's not good." Fred said, before cowering under her gaze.

**"I'm so sorry to break up this cozy little gathering," she said, her voice trembling. "I'm sure you all need your rest... but there are wedding presents stacked in my room that need sorting out and I was under the impression that you had agreed to help."**

**"Oh yes," said Hermione, looking terrified as she leapt to her feet, sending books flying in every direction. "we will... we're sorry..."**

"She is pretty scary" George whispered to Hermione, while glancing around making sure she couldn't hear him.

**With an anguished look at Harry and Ron, Hermione hurried out of the room after Mrs. Weasley.**

**"it's like being a house-elf," complained Ron in an undertone, still massaging his head as he and Harry followed. "Except without the job satisfaction. The sooner this wedding's over, the happier, I'll be."**

Molly turned her glare to her youngest son, who squirmed.

**"Yeah," said Harry, "then we'll have nothing to do except find Horcruxes... It'll be like a holiday, won't it?"**

"It's just a funny bunch today, isn't it?" cracked up Lee Jordan.

**Ron started to laugh, but at the sight of the enormous pile of wedding presents waiting for them in Mrs. Weasley's room, stopped quite abruptly.**

**The Delacours arrived the following morning at eleven o' clock. Harry, Ron, Hermione and Ginny were feeling quite resentful toward Fleur's family by this time;**

Bill laughed at the expression on Fleur's face, but kissed her on the cheek.

**and it was with ill grace that Ron stumped back upstairs to put on matching socks, and Harry attempted to flatten his hair. Once they had all been deemed smart enough, they trooped out into the sunny backyard to await the visitors.**

**Harry had never seen the place looking so tidy. The rusty cauldrons and old Wellington boots that usually littered the steps by the back door were gone, replaced by two new Flutterby bushes standing either side of the door in large pots; though there was no breeze, the leaves waved lazily, giving an attractive rippling effect. The chickens had been shut away, the yard had been swept, and the nearby garden had been pruned, plucked, and generally spruced up, although Harry, who liked it in its overgrown state, thought that it **

**looked rather forlorn without its usual contingent of capering gnomes.**

Draco and his Slytherin friends were laughing at how horid the Weasley's house sounded.

**He had lost track of how many security enchantments had been placed upon the Burrow by both the Order and the Ministry; all he knew was that it was no longer possible for anybody to travel by magic directly into the place. Mr. Weasley had therefore gone to meet the Delacours on top of a nearby hill, where they were to arrive by Portkey. The first sound of their approach was an unusually high-pitched laugh, which turned out to be coming from Mr. Weasley, **

Said man blushed as everyone laughed.

**who appeared at the gate moments later, laden with luggage and leading a beautiful blonde woman in long, leaf green robes, who could be Fleur's mother.**

Fleur beamed at the mention of her ma.

**"Maman!" cried Fleur, rushing forward to embrace her. "Papa!"**

**Monsieur Delacour was nowhere near as attractive as his wife; he was a head shorter and extremely plumb, with a little, pointed black beard. However, he looked good-natured. Bouncing towards Mrs. Weasley on high-heeled boots, he kissed her twice on each cheek, leaving her flustered.**

"**Our family doesn't just care about looks" Fleur spoke up.**

**Harry looked at her guilty, "I know. I'm sorry."**

**"You 'ave been so much trouble," he said in a deep voice. "Fleur tells us you 'ave been working very 'ard."**

**"Oh, it's been nothing, nothing!" trilled Mrs. Weasley. "No trouble at all!"**

"Not for us" Ron whispered to Harry and Hermione, who laughed.

**Ron relieved his feelings by aiming a kick at a gnome who was peering out from behind one of the new Flutterby bushes.**

"Nice one" Praised the twins, despite Mrs. Weasley's disapproving looks.

**"Dear lady!" said Monsieur Delacour, still holding Mrs. Weasley's hand between his own two plump ones and beaming. "We are most honored at the approaching union of our two families! Let me present my wife, Apolline."**

**Madame Delacour glided forward and stooped to kiss Mrs. Weasley too.**

**"Enchante," she said. "Your 'usband 'as been telling us such amusing stories!"**

"I'm sure he has" (Cue look)

**Mr. Weasley gave a maniacal laugh; Mrs. Weasley threw him a look, upon which he became immediately silent and assumed an expression appropriate to the sickbed of a close friend.**

"**Oh Dad!"**

**"And, of course, you 'ave met my leetle daughter, Gabrielle!" said Monsieur Delacour. Gabrielle was Fleur in miniature; eleven years old, with waist-length hair of pure, silvery blonde, she gave Mrs. Weasley a dazzling smile and hugged her, then threw Harry a glowing look, batting her eyelashes. Ginny cleared her throat loudly.**

"Ooooh" Teased George

"Is whittle Ginny a whittle jealous?" Fred asked.

"Shut it!"

"Ginny" Molly said warningly.

**"Well, come in, do!" said Mrs. Weasley brightly, and she ushered the Delacours into the house, with many "No, please!"s and "After you!'s and "Not at all!'s.**

**The Delacours, it soon transpired, were helpful, pleasant guests. They were pleased with everything and keen to assist with the preparations for the wedding. Monsieur Delacour pronounced everything from the seating plan to the bridesmaids' shoes "Charmant!" Madame Delacour was most accomplished at household spells and had the oven properly cleaned in a trice; Gabrielle followed her elder sister around, trying to assist in any way she could and jabbering away in rapid French.**

Fleur sighed, missing her family already.

Bill wrapped his arms around her, trying to cheer her up.

**On the downside, the Burrow was not built to accommodate so many people.**

"Of course not. What with a dumpy house like that."

"Mr. Malfoy" Ms. McGonagall said sharply, "I advise you to keep your thoughts to your self."

**Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were now sleeping in the sitting room, having shouted down Monsieur and Madame Delacour's protests and insisted they take their bedroom. Gabrielle was sleeping with Fleur in Percy's old room, and Bill would be sharing with Charlie, his best man, once Charlie arrived from Romania. Opportunities to make plans together became virtually nonexistent, and it was in desperation that Harry, Ron and Hermione took to volunteering to feed the chickens just to escape the overcrowded house.**

"You probably wont be by yourselves that much longer." Some Ravenclaw said.

**"But she still won't leave us alone!" snarled Ron, and their second attempt at a meeting in the yard was foiled by the appearance of Mrs. Weasley carrying a large basket of laundry in her arms.**

"Told you." laughed that same Ravenclaw.

**"Oh, good, you've fed the chickens," she called as she approached them. "We'd better shut them away again before the men arrive tomorrow... to put up the tent for the wedding," she explained, pausing to lean against the henhouse. She looked exhausted. **

Arthur hugged his wife, feeling bad for all the stress that was put on her.

**"Millamant's Magic Marquees... they're very good. Bill's escorting them... You'd better stay inside while they're here, Harry. I must say it does complicate organizing a wedding, having all these security spells around the place."**

Mrs. Weasley felt guilty for saying that to Harry.

But Harry beat her to it, "I'm truly sorry Mrs. Weasley."

"Oh, don't worry its nothing dear."

**"I'm sorry," said Harry humbly.**

**"Oh, don't be silly, dear!" said Mrs. Weasley at once. "I didn't mean- well, your safety's much more important! Actually, I've wanted to ask you how you want to celebrate your birthday, Harry. Seventeen, after all, it's an important day..."**

"I can't believe this is all going happen in only a year." Harry remarked.

**"I don't want a fuss," said Harry quickly, envisaging the additional strain this would put on them all. "Really, Mrs. Weasley, just a normal dinner would be fine... It's the day before the wedding..."**

**"Oh, well, if you're sure, dear. I'll invite Remus and Tonks, shall I? And how about Hagrid?"**

"Thank you Mrs. Weasley" Harry said again.

**"That'd be great," said Harry. "But please, don't go to loads of trouble."**

"So Noble", A Hufflepuff stated.

**"Not at all, not at all... It's no trouble..."**

**She looked at him, a long, searching look, then smiled a little sadly, straightened up, and walked away. Harry watched as she waved her wand near the washing line, and the damp clothes rose into the air to hang themselves up, and suddenly he felt a great wave of remorse for the inconvenience and the pain he was giving her.**

"Harry dear, I said it was no trouble."

Harry smiled at her softly.

"The chapter is over." Ginny stated to the hall.

"Well it's time to go to bed now." Dumbledore told everyone. "We will all meet here in the morning to read the nest chapter.

As all the children set off to their dorm rooms, all the guests apparated back to their homes.

Wow! And it's finished. Took me so long to finish! I hope ya'll enjoyed it. Remember to review and tell me what you think. (: 

The Questions:

1.) Who all died in the battle at Hogwarts in book 7?

2.) What is Dumbledore's full name?

3.) How did Peter die?


	9. Discussing The Book So Far

So this chapter is dedicated to Hope1494 91698padfoot 

Herald-MageAnduli and midnightqueen1896 they had the sweetest reviews, which made my day. But thank you to everyone else who reviewed or started to follow my story. This chapter isn't an actually chapter of them reading the book, so sorry! It will be them mainly talking about that has happened so far in the book. Well hope its ok, wont be as long as it is normally is, but still review Please!

**Answers:**

**Question 1: **SiriuslyInLoveWithAragorn

**Question 2: **edboy4926

**Question 3:** basketsarah120

**(Harry's P.O.V)**

Hermione, Ron, and I were all walking towards our common room. The three of us were quiet the whole time, all absorbed in our own thoughts.

I was glad we were done reading the books, but then we had to read more tomorrow. Ughh! Everyone kept saying it was all right; it would help in the long run. Yea, well all its helped is to embarrass me in front of the whole school. How would they feel if everyone was reading about their life and their every thought?

The good thing was that apparently this book was going to help us track down the horcruxe things, and defeat Voldemort hopefully. I wasn't looking forwards towards the end of the book though; I figured that to defeat Voldemort there would have to be a big battle. I couldn't even imagine how many people were going to die or get seriously injured in that battle. I couldn't let that happen.

**(Hermione's P.O.V) **

I'll admit I was a little worried for Harry; he seemed a little distant lately. Though it's probably because of this whole book reading thing. I still don't get why he couldn't talk with us about it, we were in the same position as him. Didn't he realize that we would be there his whole adventure, it's not as if we have ever really abandon him before. (A/N: Damn you Ron!)

Anyways I just hoped he started to realize reading this we could say a lot more lives by knowing how to help. Also, reading this, I could find out if Ron and I get together. I couldn't help thinking about him; we had been spending a lot more time together. I liked him a lot, and I thought it was pretty obvious. But no, not to Ronald! Ughh boys could be so annoying. Couldn't he just make a darn move? But it didn't matter; maybe this book would help fix things.

**(Ron's P.O.V)**

I could tell there was something going on with Harry. I mean it's got to be hard to have everyone read your thought. At least with Hermione and I it wasn't reading off what we were thinking.

Locking eyes with Hermione, we both decided we would just talk to Harry. As we all stepped into the common room, "Twinkle Lights" we muttered. Hermione turned towards Harry blocking his way up the stairs. I took that as my cue, I nodded towards the chairs over by the fire. With a confused look Harry walked over there with us trailing behind.

**(Harry's P.O.V)**

I had a pretty good idea what they wanted to talk to me about, and I wasn't looking forward to it.

"So" I questioned, even though I knew.

"Don't" Hermione began, "Don't pretend, Harry"

Ron spoke up, "Yea mate, we can tell something is wrong."

"Nothing is wrong. I mean it's definitely not the fact that my whole freaking life is being read like some story time book!" I couldn't help it. I was just so mad. It wasn't fair that it had to be me.

Hermione's voice took a softer tone, "Harry, we know what you're going through."

"No" he interrupted her, "You don't know."

"Well help us try."

Suddenly I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone, I just realized how exhausted I was. "I'm going to bed. I'll see you guys in the morning." And with that I left them, walking up to the boys dorm. I could tell Hermione was upset, but I really wasn't in the mood.

As I went to sleep, I couldn't help thinking about what the next chapter would bring. Would it arise new emotions, or bring drama. I just hoped my future self didn't do anything to embarrassing or stupid. With those nice thoughts, I drifted off into a peaceful sleep, thankful that no one could read these thoughts.

**Questions:**

**1: What are Harry and Ginny's kid's full names?**

**2: What is Snape's patronus and tell me why it is what it is?**

**3: At what age do Lily and James Potter die? And how? (Be detailed) **


	10. NOT A CHAPTER (Sorry)

**Hey everyone. I'm so sorry I haven't updated in forever! I just lately haven't been in much of a Harry Potter mood. :/ **

**I may update later though.**

**Anyways, you should go check out my other story I just started. If any of you like Twilight, I promise you will like it. Because I just started reading and watching the movies and books and am really obsessed. So please please check it out and review for me! Please! :D**


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